The expansion of Saudi Arabia’s Shaybah oilfield, which will boost production capacity from the southeastern field by 250,000 barrels per day (bpd), will be completed in a few months, Reuters reports.
State oil giant Saudi Aramco has said it was expanding the Shaybah and Khurais oilfields to rebalance its crude quality and help compensate for other mature fields, thus keeping Aramco’s oil production capacity unchanged at 12mn bpd.
Shaybah’s expansion is scheduled to be complete by the end of June, industry sources familiar with the matter told Reuters.
A major natural gas liquids (NGL) project at Shaybah was completed with gas already flowing, the source added. The project was originally due to be finished in 2014 but faced delays mainly due to construction activities.
The NGL plant, which has two trains, is expected to help meet increasing demand for petrochemical feedstock.
“Both trains are under commercial operation,” said a source, who declined to be identified.
The NGL project will process 2.4bn cubic feet per day (cfd) of low-sulphur sweet gas from Shaybah and send on 264,000 bpd of NGLs for fractionation at an associated processing plant in Juaymah.
Other industry sources also told Reuters the expansion of the Khurais oilfield would be finished by the end of 2017.
The expansion project of Shaybah would take output capacity to 1mn bpd from 750,000 bpd now, while Khurais’ potential will rise by 300,000 bpd to 1.5mn bpd. The original time frame to complete the expansion plans was 2016-17.
