Aramco to award four contracts worth up to $700 mln

Saudi Arabian Oil Co. (Saudi Aramco) is expected to award four contracts ahead of a larger deal on expansion of the Hasbah gas field, MEED reported citing unnamed industry sources.

The contracts are said to be worth between $150 million and $700 million and will cover work on existing Aramco assets in the Gulf, including the Safaniyah, Abu Safa and Kurayn fields, the report said.

Four international groups, which entered a long-term agreement (LTA) program with Aramco in 2015, are said to be vying for the contracts. The international firms named by the report are: Dynamic Industries (US), Larsen & Toubro (India) / Emas (Singapore), McDermott (US) and Saipem (Italy).

The four groups are also said to be in the fray for contracts on Aramco’s plans of a larger project to expand the production capacity of its Hasbah sour gas field. The contract is reported to be worth over $1.5 billion.

The Hasbah project will expand the production capacity of the gas field by an additional 2 billion cubic feet a day (cf/d), which will be piped to the onshore Fadhili gas plant.

“The Fadhili gas plant has a longer timeline than the Hasbah project,” an industry source was quoted as saying. The source added that Fadhili would take nearly 10 months longer than Hasbah to complete. “There is a gap between the two projects Aramco can play with.”

Two sources said Aramco has also invited a fifth company – reported to be UAE-based National Petroleum Construction Company (NPCC) – to join the LTA program, which gives the participants the exclusive chance to bid for projects supporting Aramco’s Maintain Potential Program, gas program and other offshore work in the Gulf.

Aramco announced the first production of gas from the Hasbah field in March.