Karan, Wasit boost gas supplies by 39 percent

The Karan offshore gas field, designed to produce 1.8 billion cubic feet per day, will increase the Kingdom’s gas output by 18 percent, the Saudi Aramco said yesterday. Petroleum and Mineral Resources Minister Ali Al-Naimi visited the facility yesterday, accompanied by senior Aramco officials. He also visited Wasit Gas Project, which will be launched mid-2014 with a capacity of 2.5 billion cubic feet daily. “This will further increase the Kingdom’s capacity by 21 percent,” the oil giant said, adding that both Karan and Wasit would contribute 40 percent of total gas supply. Al-Naimi inaugurated a project at Manifa oilfield in preparation to start production with a capacity of 500,000 bpd by mid-2013, which will be increased to 900,000 bpd by the end of 2014. Work on Karan has been completed before schedule reducing the cost of construction, and production began with full capacity during the peak period of summer, the company said. The first-phase startup of Karan marks a significant milestone in the company’s gas expansion program, underlining its role as a reliable supplier of energy and its ability to bring giant projects online. Discovered in April 2006, Karan is the first nonassociated gas field in Saudi territorial waters in the Arabian Gulf, 160 km north of the company’s headquarters in Dhahran. Offshore facilities at Karan consist of five production platform complexes connected to a main tie-in platform, installed with associated electrical power, communication and state-of-the-art remote monitoring and control facilities for safe and reliable operations from onshore. A 110-km subsea pipeline is transporting Karan gas to onshore processing facilities at the Khursaniyah Gas Plant. The gas is processed through a number of trains that include facilities for gas sweetening, acid-gas enrichment, gas dehydration and supplementary propane refrigeration. From arabnews