Saudi giant Aramco calls the Manifa oilfield “extraordinary” for a number of reasons. It’s not just a treasure trove of oil and gas hiding beneath the bay, but also a delicate habitat of seagrass and coral reefs, Aramco says. In 2006, the company invested $10 billion into the project to find out how it could extract hydrocarbons from the reservoir without harming the marine ecosystem.
Here are 5 facts you need to know about the giant field:
- To avoid damaging the fragile ecosystem, Aramco’s engineers shunned the easy option of building 30 offshore platforms, and came up with the idea to convert over 70% of the field into an onshore field. This ground-breaking design meant creating 27 man-made islands, each one the size of 10 soccer pitches, all made from 45 million cubic meters of sand reclaimed from the seabed. The islands would act as onshore drill sites above the offshore oil field, and would be linked by a 41-km causeway.
- Aramco’s designers and engineers spent 4 million hours on the design phase alone, to perfect the 27 islands, 13 bridges, 13 offshore platforms, 15 onshore drill sites, 350 new wells, injection facilities, multiple pipelines, and a 420-megawatt heat and electricity plant.
- It wasn’t until 2013 that oil production began, three months ahead of schedule and more than $1 billion under budget. In July 2013, Manifa produced 500,000 bpd, and in 2017 it reached its target of 900,000 bpd.
- During the execution phase alone, more than 21,000 jobs were created for people from 25 nations, impacting thousands of families, both directly and indirectly across the Kingdom and beyond.
- For the expansion of the Manifa project, also known as Contract Release & Purchase Order (CRPO) 121, Aramco recently issued tender documents to its select group of long-term agreement contractors, including Saipem, McDermott, and L&T/Subsea 7.