Saudi Aramco's gas processing plant at the 500,000 barrels per day (bpd) Khursaniyah oilfield is ready to start operations, the company's vice president for project management said on Tuesday. Speaking at the sidelines of an industry conference, Majid Al Mugla said: “Khursaniyah gas plant is commissioning, the first unit finished and will produce tomorrow (Wednesday).” He added: “The second unit will start production in two to three months.” The plant has capacity to process around 1 billion cubic feet per day (cfd) of sour gas from the Abu Hadriya, Fadhili and Khursaniyah fields. It has two natural gas liquids (NGL) trains and would also process gas from the Karan offshore field. Delays in construction at the plant have put off the whole Khursaniyah oilfield development project, one of the largest in Saudi expansion plans as the kingdom boosted crude oil production capacity to 12.5 million bpd. Khursaniyah oilfield started output in September 2008, even though the gas plant was incomplete. The whole project was initially scheduled to start in December 2007. The facility would have the capacity to produce 560 million cfd of sales gas and 280,000 barrels per day of ethane and natural gas liquids. About 450 million cfd of gas from the first phase of the Karan gas project is expected to come online by mid 2011. - Reuters Meanwhile, preliminary engineering and design work for Saudi Arabia's biggest gas plant should be completed by the first quarter of next year, an Aramco executive said. Aramco has switched focus to meeting domestic gas demand after completing last year a massive crude expansion project to boost output capacity to 12.5 million barrels per day. As petrodollars fuel economic expansion, the Arab world's largest economy is contending with rapid demand growth for gas-fired power and for feedstock for the petrochemical industry. The world's top oil exporter is experiencing annual gas demand growth of 7 percent per year. “The front-end engineering and design (FEED) would be completed between the third quarter of this year and the first quarter,” Majid al-Mugla said on the sidelines of an industry conference late Tuesday.
