SAUDI Aramco has revealed that it plans to move ahead rapidly with the development of its Arabiyah and Shaybah gas projects, awarding early work and planning contracts perhaps as soon as September and seeing the main engineering, procurement and construction (EPC) contract packages being tendered and awarded by the second quarter of 2010.

The rapid project push comes as the kingdom has to meet continued gas demand growth of about 7 per cent per year, while efforts to discover new gas reserves in its vast Rub Al-Khali (Empty Quarter) desert with the help of IOCs have yielded meagre results.

Aramco discovered the non-associated Arabiyah gas field early this year together with another reservoir, Hasbah, and has said that the two together should be able to sustain a production capacity of about 1.8 bcfd.

The Arabiyah gas development will be built out of the nearby Manifa oilfield’s facilities, with a 1-bcfd gas treatment plant to be added to the onshore treatment facilities being built to serve the oilfield.

At the Shaybah gas project, the associated gas from the field’s extensions will be treated in a natural gas liquids (NGL) recovery plant, with an NGL splitter also being added and debottlenecking of existing gas-oil separation plants being done to raise throughput capacity.

Aramco is expanding Shaybah’s oil production capacity from 500,000 bpd to 750,000 bpd and its expanded associated gas facilities would come on stream in 2014, at the same time as the Arabiyah project.

Saudi Arabia’s rapid domestic demand growth is continuing to press the kingdom to come up with the necessary reserves and production capacity. Aramco has said it will need to raise the nation’s gas production from today’s 6.2 bcfd to 9 bcfd by 2015, especially if all the planned industrial projects — meant to create jobs for the country’s ballooning number of unemployed youth — are to be built.