Abdulrahman M Abdullatif, an engineer from South Ghawar Produ-cing, posed a fundamental question to executives visiting Udhailiyah recently, “Are we ready for the world’s future energy demands?”

“With increasing oil demands,” Abdullatif said, “the world looks to Saudi Arabia, and more specifically Saudi Aramco, to provide the needed feedstock.”
Southern Area Oil Operations (SAOO) has risen to that challenge and has been maintaining above-plan production rates for the past three years.
In addition to its Maintain Potential Projects providing more than a million barrels per day (bpd), Haradh III recently chipped in this year with another 300,000 bpd.
Over the next three years, the Khurais and Nuayyim projects will contribute an additional 1.3 million bpd.
“Currently, we produce more than 60 per cent of Saudi Aramco’s oil,” Abdullatif said during an Executive Management Safety Review, “and we intend to maintain this position for years to come.”
No detail has been overlooked when it comes to the reliability of SAOO facilities.
Every component of SAOO’s 32 Gas Oil Separation Plants (GOSPs) and 15 Water Injection Plants (WIPs) has been studied and optimised to ensure reliability.
Starting from the very beginning – wells – SAOO regularly performs well surveillance and inspection of all its 3,000 oil wells, 670 water wells and 340 gas wells.
The integrity of every wellhead valve is monitored and maintained. Even the 8,000 kilometres of flowlines, some buried and difficult to examine, are regularly inspected.
Initiatives such as the Southern Area Plants Integrity Assessment, the Risk Based Inspection studies of the GOSPs, and the In-House Corrosion Review Team have been in place over the past few years and have identified areas where reliability can be increased.
SAOO also has been putting the latest technologies to work on its processes. One such technology is the intelligent field (i-field), which has been applied to all Haradh GOSP-3 wells.
“The i-field enables us to remotely monitor critical data for a well, such as wellhead temperature and pressure,” said Abdullatif.
“The application of i-field will ensure optimum reservoir production and longer well life,” he said.
“To harness the full potential of such new technologies and the latest industry practices,” said Abdullatif, “we need to develop our people and their skills. Over the years we have introduced special development programmes for our employees to help increase the reliability of our human resources.”
One such programme is the Production Enginee-ring Specialist Programme, which started in 2002.
The goal of the programme is to develop production engineers into industry experts, specialising in a range of areas from well treatment to artificial lift.
Another programme that began in 2001 is the Accelerated Engineering Development Pro-gramme. Tailored for operations engineers, it helps quickly develop competent engineers to handle the facilities.
“Are we ready for the future and the challenges it entails?” asked Abdullatif. “The answer is that we have been ready, and we can say with full confidence that, yes, we are ready for the future.”