Saudi Aramco inks $4.5 bln worth of oil, gas deals

Saudi Aramco on Thursday signed several deals worth $4.5 billion with international firms on a range of oil and gas development projects.

The deals were signed with companies including Spain's Tecnicas Reunidas, Italy's Saipem, China Petroleum Pipeline and Abu Dhabi's National Petroleum Construction.

“These agreements we signed are part of our natural gas expansion, as we add about 1 billion standard cubic feet per day (scfd).. These new supplies will help reduce domestic reliance on liquid fuels for power generation, enable increased liquids exports, provide feedstock to petrochemical industries, and reduce carbon emissions,” Saudi Aramco chief executive Amin Nasser said in a company statement.

Three contracts were awarded to Tecnicas Reunidas to build gas compression plants for the Hawiyah and Haradh fields which will extend plateau production for both fields for the next 20 years, Aramco said.

Italy’s Saipem won a deal to expand the capacity of Hawiyah gas processing plant, which aims at efficiently meeting local demand.

Other deals included a contract with China Petroleum Pipelines to establish gas pipelines from the Haradh field to the Hawiyah processing plant, an engineering services and project management agreement for the development of Zuluf Field with Jacobs Engineering, a pipeline construction deal in the Safaniyah field with the National Petroleum Construction Company (NPCC), and a construction deal for slipover platforms and electrical distribution platform project in Safaniyah oil field with McDermott Middle East.

The deals are also a way to “diversify our economy, promote local manufacturing, support a sustainable environment, and strengthen our business and investment climate with the domestic private sector through fruitful international partnerships,” Nasser added.