Foster Wheeler at FEED on MGSE gas compression
In October 2013, the national oil company (NOC) Saudi Aramco selected the Swiss-based engineering company Foster Wheeler to perform the front end engineering and design (FEED) work of the compression stations for the Master Gas System Expansion (MGSE) project.
To be implemented in phases, the Master Gas System Expansion project is vital for Saudi Arabia to support the development of its non-associated gas, unconventional gas and related condensate reserves.
With 285 trillion cubic feet (tcf) of proved reserves of natural gas, Saudi Arabia ranks among the top five countries in the word.
From gas production perspective, Saudi Arabia stands in the top ten countries globally with a year-to-year growth ranging between 5% and 10%.
Despite that, the domestic needs in natural gas for the power supply, house cooking and petrochemical applications are ramping up in the same way, so that for the last twenty years Saudi Arabia maintains a strict zero net import/export balance.
In practice Saudi Arabia is using expensive crude oil to feed power plants and naphtha crackers wherever it cannot provide competitive gas supply.
From the 2011 production of 3.5 tcf of natural gas, Saudi Aramco is aiming at doubling it by 2030 including the compensation of the maturing fields depletion.
In addition to the challenge in volume, Saudi Arabia is to overcome the geographical spread of the country with resources located in different places from where it would like to grow its economical development from the Eastern Province to the Red Sea coast.
Saudi Aramco to invest $1.65 billion in MGSE phase-1
On the 1970s, Saudi Arabia started to monetize its gas reserves, and in the 2000s Saudi Aramco intended to gather all the associated gas flared until then from the crude oil fields production.
In that purpose, Saudi Aramco designed the first phases of the Master Gas System (MGS) crossing the country from Yanbu on the Red Sea to Shedgum in passing by Ryadh.
Now Saudi Arabia is willing to speed up the conversion of number of power plants from oil to natural gas.
In that perspective Saudi Aramco is extending the existing Master Gas System to the Western Province in order to supply the power plants located there.
Therefore the Master Gas System Expansion project phase-1 should include:
- 500 additional kilometers of pipelines
- Two gas compression stations
- Offsite and Utilities
Estimated to require $1.65 billion capital expenditure, this first phase of the Master Gas System Expansion project should provide immediate return to Saudi Aramco by the savings made on the crude oil being replaced by the natural gas.
As soon as Foster Wheeler will have completed its FEED work on the compression stations, Saudi Aramco will award the engineering, procurement and construction (EPC) contract for this first phase of the Master Gas System Expansion project to come on stream in 2017.