Saudi Aramco Close to Completing Wasit Gas Project

Saudi Aramco has almost finished the construction of its giant Wasit gas project, news agency Reuters reported Sunday.

However, industry sources have told Reuters that the state owned firm is processing gas from the Karan gas field and not from the offshore fields designated to feed the gas plant.

The plant is not expected to start processing non-associated gas, which contains no oil, from offshore sour gas fields Arabiyah and Hasbah before the end of the year due to technical difficulties, the news agency added.

"If these plants are not scaled to the required capacity to remove all the H2S and C02 content of the Wasit inlet gas, it would mean the sales gas impurities would be higher than what the national gas grid can accept," said Sadad Al-Husseini, a former senior executive at Saudi Aramco. "The solution would be to expand the capacity of these units and process a smaller volume of inlet gas in the interim period," he said.

"This is not a big technical issue but it means the project will not operate at full capacity until the sour gas processing expansion is completed."