Saudi Aramco awards $2 billion deal to expand offshore field

Saudi Aramco has awarded a $2 billion contract to Saipem as part of the capacity expansion of the huge Marjan offshore field in Saudi Arabia, the Italian engineering group said in a statement.

The new contract is part of an existing long-term agreement between Saipem and the world’s largest oil company.

Saipem’s scope of work involves the design, procurement, construction and installation of wellhead platform surfaces, well platform jackets, tie-in platform casing and topside, rigid flowlines, submarine composite cables and fiber optic cables.

This is the second contract the Italian group has won with Saudi Aramco this month.

In early September, Saipem was awarded two contracts worth a total of $1 billion to install jackets, production modules, pipelines and subsea power cables at the Marjan, Zuluf and Safaniyah oil fields in Saudi Arabia.

Aramco was instructed earlier this year by the Kingdom’s leadership to stop work on expanding its maximum sustainable capacity to 13 million barrels per day (bpd), instead keeping it at 12 million barrels per day.

Despite the reversal of the capacity increase policy, Saudi Aramco continues to work to expand crude oil production in several fields, including the Marjan, Berri, Dammam and Zuluf crude oil growth projects.

In its semi-annual report last month, Saudi Aramco said it was continuing to work on projects to maintain its maximum sustainable capacity of 12 million bpd and preserve operational flexibility.

The Dammam development project, which is expected to add 25,000 bpd of crude oil production later this year and 50,000 bpd in 2027, has progressed construction. The Marjan and Berri crude additions, which are expected to add 300,000 bpd and 250,000 bpd of production capacity respectively by 2025, continued with procurement and construction activities. Finally, the Zuluf crude oil ramp-up, which is expected to provide a central facility to process a total of 600,000 bpd of crude oil from the Zuluf field by 2026, continued with engineering, procurement and construction activities.

By Tsvetana Paraskova for Oilprice.com

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