Saudi Aramco will launch in June the largest new field in its plan to raise crude capacity to 12.5 million barrels per day (bpd) by the end of this year, Al-Hayat newspaper reported on Saturday. “The Khurais oil project ... will open as scheduled in June,” Al-Hayat newspaper quoted an unidentified source as saying. The $10 billion Khurais project is one of the largest ever single additions to global oil production capacity and the largest integrated oilfield project taken on by Aramco to date. The Khurais oilfield development is the largest of several Saudi Aramco projects intended to boost the production capacity of Saudi Arabia's oilfields from 11.3 million bpd to 12.5 million bpd by 2009. The Khurais project as a whole covers three oil fields: Khurais, Abu Jifan and Mazalij. The Khurais field, with an area of 2,890km² and 127km long, located about 250km southwest of Dhahran and 300km north southeast of Riyadh, is the biggest in the project. Abu Jifan covers 520km² southwest of Khurais and Mazalij covers 1,630km² southeast of Abu Jifan. In addition to the 1.2 million bpd of Arabian Light (AL) crude blend that will be produced and delivered through the East/West Pipeline, the huge program will produce 315 million standard cubic feet per day (scfd) of sour gas for Shedgum Gas Plant and 70,000 bpd of natural gas liquids (NGL) for Yanbu Gas Plant. The program will increase the amount of treated seawater from the Qurrayah Seawater Treatment Plant by 4.5 million bpd, measuring the largest single seawater injection capacity expansion ever to be done under one program.
