Work has officially begun on Manifa - the second largest of Saudi Aramco's mega-projects in terms of production. It will add 900,000 barrels per day of crude oil to Saudi Aramco's production, which is very important to the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia and the world, according to a report carried yesterday by Saudi Aramco's web-site. The start-up of the work at Manifa follows the signing of the Program Management Contract (PMC) and Front End Engineering and Design (FEED) Contract on October 29. Through a competitive bid process, Foster Wheeler Energy Ltd. of Reading, U.K., won the right to execute the out-of-Kingdom preliminary engineering and design work, which will consist primarily of the central processing facilities and gas-producing facilities. Foster Wheeler Arabia, along with its Saudi Arabian partner, SOFCON, will provide in-Kingdom support such as front-end engineering and design and project-management services. The intention is to perform and execute as much work as possible using in-Kingdom resources. "This is one of the most significant and important projects for Saudi Aramco," said Mohammad A. Al-Juwair, acting executive director of Project Management. Now that the contracts have been signed, a team from Saudi Aramco is already in Foster Wheeler's corporate offices in Reading, where the kick-off meeting was held on November 6. Since the Manifa field is mostly in shallow water, the key to the project is a 41-kilometer causeway. The main artery of the causeway will be 21 km long. Offshoots totaling an additional 20 km will lead to 27 drilling islands. The remaining 11 offshore wells (four production and seven water injection) will be drilled in the traditional way using platforms and jackets. The lump-sum turnkey contract for the causeway is already out for bid. The Manifa crude oil field is a grassroots development that will be developed all at once from scratch. The central processing facility will be constructed on a site where there is nothing now but desert, beach and one small communications building. Crude oil will be separated there from associated gasses, water and other liquids and will be shipped by pipeline to Ju'aymah. In addition to the 900,000 bpd of crude oil, the central processing facility also will handle 120 million standard cubic feet per day (scfd) of sour gas, 50,000 bpd of condensate and 950,000 bpd of produced water. The associated natural gas liquids (NGL) will be piped to the Khursaniyah Gas Plant, which is still under construction. The Manifa gasses will be mixed with gas from the Khursaniyah field and all of it sent to Ju'aymah Gas Plant. There it will become part of the sales gas for the Kingdom. Work on the offshore engineering, procurement and construction packages has already started, and it is expected that the lump-sum turnkey packages will be awarded in mid-2007. Onshore work including temporary utilities, access roads and bridges is expected to start sooner than that.
