Which of Ariel Corporation’s products are seeing the highest demand in the Gulf region?
The general demand in the GCC is spread across all of our product range, 50kW to 7.5MW, and various applications ranging from wellhead to midstream booster and downstream fuel gas booster. There has been a recent spike in the demand for Early Production Facilities and ‘mid-stream’ Gas Treatment plants which has delivered an increased demand in our mid and large line compressors, approximately 1MW to 5MW.
How does Ariel fit into a gas-centric future?
Ariel Corporation is the world’s largest manufacturer of separable reciprocating gas compressors. As such our customers, and the industry, look to Ariel for innovation to deliver their future compression needs. Ariel Corporation has constantly been investing in people, new factories, machinery and R&D to enhance our product offering and bring new technologies to the market. Over the past year, Ariel has focused on supplying the increased demand for new compressors and parts, and continues to work with our global network of approved packagers and distributors to ensure that compression and compression support are available locally, wherever you are.
What are some products that you have recently launched?
In 2018, Ariel Corporation launched the KBK & KBT range of compressors. They are made to run continuously in the oil and gas industry, and are designed to increase strength of internal parts, handling standard and specialised applications.
Because of their features,the uptake of these new ranges from our customers across the globe has been very pleasing, and we have orders for ‘hundreds’ of these compressors in hand. In the Middle East & Africa region we have orders placed from Iraq, Egypt and Pakistan.
Tell me about your work to improve SNOC’s gas recovery.
In 2011 Sharjah National Oil Company embarked on a project to increase the gas flow from their Sajaa, Moveyeid and Kahaif fields. The gas wells were depleting and this was affecting the flow of the gas to the emirate of Sharjah. SNOC purchased 12 Ariel compressors to be used to reduce the wellhead pressure and ‘Gather’ the gas from the depleting wells. This project was a resounding success for SNOC as not only did the compressors increase gas flow, but also the condensate flow from the wells. The deployment of the Ariel compressors recovered an extra 14 billion standard cubic feet of gas over 3 years.
What are Ariel’s key focus areas in 2019?
With the increased demand for compression around the world, Ariel Corporation is focused on increasing our production capacity to deliver our customers’ expectations for new compressors and parts. Regionally, we continue to focus on sales growth and key accounts. We are working with our distribution to review and focus on the ‘localisation’ and support of Ariel compressors in the region. Ariel distributors now have at least one local service and support centre in KSA, Kuwait, Bahrain, UAE, Oman and Pakistan. Ariel is also implementing a training strategy which will deliver an Ariel Corporation Middle East based training facility, allowing the training of over 100 end user and distributor personnel. We recognise a need for this in the region and will invest accordingly.
About the interviewee: Ray Shaw is the regional director for Ariel Corporation, responsible for Ariel’s sales and marketing activities and operations within Europe, the Middle East and Africa region.
