SAUDI ARABIA - Southern Area - Ralph Parsons.

This five-year project, for the Hawiyah structure, one of the Ghawar fields, called for one new 300,000 b/d GOSP and for expansion of the capacity of two existing GOSPs, plus a new 1.35m b/d seawater injection plant for Ghawar, and an extension to the seawater treatment plant at Qurrayah. By July 1992 completion of the water injection pipeline raised Ghawar's output capacity, with a 150,000 b/d GOSP added to Ghawar at Farzan.

Saudi Aramco in February 1992 awarded a contract to Bechtel/CCC to build a 300,000 b/d GOSP and expand by 300,000 b/d to 1.2m b/d two other GOSPs at Hawiyah. Now Hawiyah is the site of a huge plant processing non-associated gas. Haradh, another oil and gas field in the Ghawar area, is the site of a plant to process 1,620 MCF/d of non-associated gas which went on stream in late 2003 - see Gas Market Trends). Two contracts were awarded later in 1992 to update the control systems for a crude oil processing plant at Abqaiq (a field near the northern part of the Ghawar axis) and the gas plant at Uthmaniyah, of the Ghawar fields.

The proposed adding of the Farzan GOSP to the 300,000 b/d GOSP already in the plan for Udayliyah, a Ghawar field, suggested another 520,000 b/d in new Ghawar capacity once the project was to be completed. There was little doubt, however, that the Ghawar fields were beginning to mature and required new drilling and injection technologies.

The Najd Fields - John Brown: The contract to develop the Hawtah trend in the Najd called for one GOSP and one blending station, with the construction of a pipeline to link the new production system to Petroline (the east-west crude oil pipeline).

This project was expanded and speeded up as more fields were found in the area by mid-1993. So the production capacity was targeted in 1994 to reach 200,000 b/d in early 1995, which was realised. Saudi Aramco began giving contracts for the Hawtah field development with the April 1992 award to ABB Lummus Crest (a US unit of the Swedish-Swiss firm Asea Brown Boveri) of a job to build a GOSP in Hawtah. Another contract was given in mid-1992 to Stone and Webster for a crude oil stabilisation plant at the field.

To Maintain Potential - Lummus Crest: This contract focused on ongoing infrastructural support for Marjan, Berri and Safaniyah. It predated the expansion and was to meet the needs of various fields.

Lummus Crest has built in kit form modular platforms for the offshore expansion in the northern area. Lummus Crest also dealt with ongoing problems of corrosion in the underwater pipelines.

The Gulf Crisis: Iraq's invasion of Kuwait on Aug. 2, 1990 meant that 5m b/d of Iraqi and Kuwaiti oil production was out of the market. It prompted Riyadh to raise output at top speed. Also prompted by Washington, US companies provided Saudi Aramco with considerable technical assistance and equipment at a speed matching the US military build-up in the Eastern Province. This enabled Saudi Aramco to raise crude oil production to over 8m b/d in October 1990, by which time world oil prices had risen sharply.

Much of the increase in production capacity was accomplished from late 1990 through a de-mothballing of existing facilities: the recommissioning of 146 oil wells and 12 mothballed GOSPs in the Ghawar, Harmaliyah and Khurais fields, together with all associated gas gathering and wet crude oil handling facilities. These facilities added more than 1m b/d of Arabian Extra Light, Arabian Light and Arabian Medium crude oils to meet world demand. Other efforts to increase crude oil production during the Gulf crisis included opening up GOSPs in the Safaniyah, Zuluf, Marjan, Khursaniyah, Qatif and Abu Hadriyah fields, which had previously been bypassed. Work also involved the drilling of 82 new oil wells and a new 72 km pipeline to connect 42 wells to GOSPs in these fields.

When the Gulf war broke out in January 1991, Saudi output averaged 8.7m b/d and world oil prices were falling. Capacity additions enabled Saudi Aramco to produce 9.1m b/d in August 1991, with another 185,000 b/d coming from the Saudi share of the Divided Zone. This helped restore market stability after an aborted coup in the Soviet Union and a September OPEC meeting.Later the Saudi output fell to 8m b/d in line with an OPEC quota. But the share of lighter crudes in Saudi exports at times reached almost 7m b/d.