Construction and engineering activities for Saudi Aramco’s Marjan and Berri offshore crude oil increments continue, according to the company, which expects them to add 300,000 b/d and 250,000 b/d of production, respectively, by 2025. Aramco in 2019 awarded 34 contracts for engineering, procurement, and construction work on expansion of the two fields (OGJ Online, July 9, 2019).
Construction is also continuing on the Dammam development project, which is expected to add 25,000 b/d by 2024 and 50,000 b/d by 2027. The Zuluf oil field expansion is in its engineering phase and will include a new onshore central plant to process a total of 600,000 b/d of Arab Heavy from the offshore field 240 km north of Dhahran by 2026.
The Saudi government has mandated that Aramco increase maximum sustainable crude oil capacity to 13 million b/d by 2027. In 2022, Aramco’s average hydrocarbon production was 13.6 million boe/d, including 11.5 million b/d of total liquids.
Natural gas compression projects at Haradh and Hawiyah fields have begun commissioning, and full capacity is expected to be reached in 2023. Construction of the Hawiyah Unayzah gas reservoir storage, Saudi Arabia’s first underground natural gas storage project, is at an advanced stage and has commenced injection activities, Aramco said. The program is designed to provide up to 2 bcfd to the country’s domestic gas system by 2024.
Aramco also announced its final investment decision (FID) to participate with Shandong Energy Group Co. Ltd. in the development of a major integrated refinery and petrochemical complex in Shandong Province, northeast China, to which it will supply 210,000 b/d of crude oil. The decision comes roughly 1 year after Aramco took FID on its joint-venture Huajin Aramco Petrochemical Co.’s 300,000-b/d refining and ethylene-based steam-cracking complex to be built in Panjin City, Liaoning Province (OGJ Online, Dec. 13, 2022).
In November, a joint development agreement was signed between Aramco and the Ministry of Energy to build what Aramco describes as one of the largest planned carbon capture and storage hubs in the world in Jubail, Saudi Arabia, with a storage capacity of up to 9 million tonnes/year of carbon dioxide by 2027.
Aramco had a record net income of $161.1 billion in 2022, compared with $110 billion in 2021.
