Construction of Karan Gas Program Under Way

KARAN, October 21, 2009 --The Karan Gas Program is off and running as all four contract packages have begun major construction activity, the latest evidence that the program is meeting all its major milestones.

“The start of fabrication and construction reflects how our project team has risen to meet our challenge of meeting the Kingdom’s future need for gas in a safe, environmentally responsible and high quality manner,” said Fuad Al-Azman, manager of Karan Gas Projects Department.

Since the awarding of all program contracts in March, a stream of critical activities has been accomplished. In September, the Offshore Platforms and Subsea Pipeline package began fabrication of 30,000 metric tons of steel for 38 structures. The three onshore packages — Karan Gas Facilities, Pipeline Utilities and Cogeneration, and the Karan Sulfur Recovery and Manifa Gas Facilities — have also begun initial construction activities at Khursaniyah

Project teams are made up of members from Saudi Aramco and contractors J. Ray McDermott, Hyundai Engineering and Construction Co., Petrofac and GS Engineering.

Karan is the first nonassociated offshore gas field to be developed by the company. The onshore facility, about 160 kilometers north of Dhahran, will have the capacity to process 1.8 billion standard cubic feet per day (scfd) of Karan Khuff gas.

The gas will move in a 110-kilometer subsea pipeline from the field to onshore processing facilities at the Khursaniyah Gas Plant. The offshore facilities at Karan consist of four production platforms connected to a main tie-in platform that will feed the sour gas to the subsea pipeline.

Gas will be processed through three trains, each with a capacity of 600 million scfd, at Khursaniyah. The trains will include facilities for gas sweetening, acid-gas enrichment, gas dehydration and supplementary propane refrigeration.

The facilities also will include a cogeneration plant with boiler, a sulfur recovery unit with storage tank, substations and a transmission pipeline linked to the Kingdom’s Master Gas System

Five teams, including contractors and company employees in the United Arab Emirates, South Korea and Saudi Arabia, have been working on the first phase of the project, aimed at producing 450 million scfd by mid-2011.