Saudi Aramco let a front-end engineering and project-management services contract to Foster Wheeler Energy Ltd. for full development of supergiant Khurais oil and gas field in Saudi Arabia.
The field is to produce 1.2 million b/d of Arabian light crude by 2009 as part of Aramco’s program to raise production capacity from 10.5 million b/d at present to 12 million b/d by 2009 (OGJ, July 11, 2005, p. 22).
The contract, the terms of which were not disclosed, commits Foster Wheeler to build a grassroots central processing facility at Khurais. It also covers upgrading support facilities at the Ju’aymah gas plant and constructing interfield pipelines and facilities for product handling and storage.
Saudi officials have said Khurais, with at least 12 billion bbl of recoverable oil, is only 1.8% depleted (OGJ, Apr. 5, 2004, p. 18).
Beydoun wrote in 1988 that the 70 km long structure’s main pays are Upper Jurassic Arab D and Hanifa carbonates and the Middle Jurassic Dhruma formation’s Fadhili zone carbonate reservoir.
Discovered 65 miles west of supergiant Ghawar field in 1957, Khurais began sustained production in 1970 and had yielded 111 million bbl by mid-1979 when output averaged 33,000 b/d. It was later shut in.
The other elements in the kingdom’s near-term production additions include:
• 300,000 b/d from the Haradh portion of Ghawar field in 2006.
• 500,000 b/d from developments in Abu Hadriya, Fadhili, and Khursaniyah fields in 2007.
• 200,000 b/d from Shaybah field in the Empty Quarter in far southeastern Saudi Arabia.
• 100,000 b/d from Nuayyim field.
The Saudis have said that more production increments are scheduled beyond 2009. ✦
