JEDDAH: Saudi Aramco has awarded deals to South Korean firms to build the Kingdom's largest gas plant, Wasit, it said in a statement Tuesday. South Korea's SK Engineering and Construction won three engineering, procurement and construction (EPC) deals, which involve the work for the inlet and gas facilities, sulfur recovery units (SRU) and utilities, and natural gas liquids (NGL) fractionation plants Samsung Engineering has also won an EPC contract which involved building four 150 megawatt (MW) cogeneration units. Aramco did not give a value for the deals or the cost of the project. Industry sources have said the project would cost $6-$8 billion. Wasit, part of Aramco's push to raise gas feedstock supplies, is designed to process 2.5 billion cubic feet per day (cfd) of gas from the offshore non-associated sour gas fields Arabiyah and Hasbah when completed in 2014. It would also produce around 1.75 billion cfd of sales gas. Under the inlet and gas facilities package, SK will build four gas-treating trains. It will also build 4 SRUs and NGL facilities, Aramco said, without specifying the capacity of the plants. NGL facilities call for the processing of 240,000 bpd of ethane and NGL stream produced at Khursaniyah, Aramco said earlier, in a description of the project on its website. Wasit is one of the fast-tracked gas plants Aramco plans to build. The other one is Shaybah Natural Gas Liquids (NGL) whose bids are now under evaluation. Most of the Kingdom's gas output is associated with oil, so when Saudi Arabia curbs crude output with OPEC it loses some gas volumes. Aramco's gas reserves, the world's fifth largest, stood at 275.2 trillion cubic feet in 2009, of which 50 percent was not associated with oil output. Together with two other plants, Khursaniyah and Karan, the Wasit plant would help Saudi Arabia process its targeted production increase of raw gas to 15.5 billion cubic feet per day (cfd) by 2015 from 10.2 billion cfd. Canada's SNC-Lavalin (SNC.TO: Quote) has carried out front-end engineering and design of the plant. The Wasit onshore gas program includes a facility to treat 2.5 trillion cubic feet of non-associated natural gas per day, Aramco said. The gas would come from the Arabiyah-Hasbah offshore field, with production slated to begin in 2014. SK Engineering won a contract that includes performing the engineering, procurement and construction work for the inlet and gas facilities. It includes building four gas treatment trains, flare and burn pit facilities and other related projects. SK also secured a contract for the engineering and construction of sulfur recovery units.
