Eric Watkins
Senior Correspondent
LOS ANGELES, Aug. 4 -- Khalda Petroleum Co., a joint venture of Apache Corp. and Egyptian General Petroleum Corp., let a contract to Petrofac Ltd. for engineering and procurement services for an additional gas train at the Salam natural gas plant on Apache's Khalda Concession in Egypt's Western Desert.
The new facility, expected to come online in late 2010, will be Khalda's fifth gas processing facility at Salam. It will be built next to the third and fourth Salam gas trains, now under construction.
Apache earlier awarded Petrofac contracts totaling $375 million to construct the third and fourth trains, each of which will have the capacity to process 100 MMcfd of gas and 14,000 b/d of condensate.
In November 2006, Apache reported that EGPC and Egyptian Natural Gas Holding Co. had approved construction of the fourth processing train at the Salam plant.
Apache said the fourth train, along with the recently approved third train, would increase the capacity to process gas from Apache's Jurassic formation gas reserves to 710 MMcfd of gas and 66,000 b/d of condensate, including access to processing capacity at Shell's Obaiyed plant.
At the time, Apache said gross production from its Jurassic fields was "512 MMcfd of gas and 18,200 b/d, the limit of existing processing facilities."
Petrofac last month said it had acquired production engineering firm, Eclipse Petroleum Technology Ltd., for an initial £7 million, with a further payment of as much as £16 million to be determined by "the level of future profitability." Eclipse will form part of Petrofac's facilities management.
Contact Eric Watkins at [email protected].
