Saudi Arabian Oil Company (Saudi Aramco) said that oil production is under way at the Nu‘ayyim plant, bringing 100,000 barrels per day of Arabian super light in addition to 100 million standard cubic feet per day of associated gas. The field is 250 kilometers (km) south of Riyadh and about 50 km northeast of the Hawtah Plant, which was the first central region producing facility.

Nu‘ayyim is equipped with the smart-field technology, enabling operators to view a variety of relevant downhole and surface data and make adjustments from their control-room desks.

Production and reservoir engineers are able to monitor well performance and acquire real-time information that allows them to perform first-class reservoir management.

The gas-oil separation plant has compressors capable of transporting gas the 300-km distance to Haradh gas plant.

It also marks a first for Southern Area Oil Operations (SAOO) with the addition of the Tetraethyleneglycol, or TEG, unit, which removes liquid residues from the gas before shipment to Haradh to minimize pipeline and valve corrosion and save maintenance costs.

“A squad of Saudi engineers from Saudi Aramco participated in the project design, and drew from past engineering and field experiences to design a closed-processing system to preserve every drop of oil in the plant,” said Samer M. Al-Umairin, Oil operations superintendent for the ‘Uthmaniyah Producing Division, who earlier was an operations representative for the Nu‘ayyim project.

The team met the water pre-injection requirements to ensure production efficiency from the field. Under that requirement, 5.5 million barrels of water was injected three months earlier to attain the reservoir pressure needed for production.

Smokeless flaring was employed to significantly reduce carbon dioxide emissions as part of the company’s effort to protect the environment.

The project maintained an outstanding safety record throughout, notching 11.6 million work-hours with no lost-time incidents. That success was credited to the periodic safety meetings with all employees, continuous monitoring, work-permit verification and frequent communication of safety information to employees and contractors.

“I know personally the amount of effort exerted by the work team in this project, and I am proud of them,” said Yousef A. Al-Furaidan, the former manager of South Ghawar Producing Department. “The plant was commissioned efficiently and without difficulty.”

“Saudi Aramco provides the latest world-class technologies in the oil industry for easy operating and precise control,” said Nasir K. Al-Naimi, general manager of Southern Area Producing. “These plants are run, operated and maintained by skilled Saudi hands, which is evidence of the company’s success in managing, operating and maintaining its facilities. That is the source of our pride.”

“The Nu‘ayyim project is part of the company journey toward reaching a maximum sustainable capacity of 12 million barrels per day,” said Saad A. Al-Turaiki, vice president of Southern Area Oil Operations. “The successful and safe completion of another project in the company demonstrates its capability to execute its own projects.”

Al-Turaiki credited the collaboration between project Management and SAOO in every phase of the project. “What is more fulfilling is that the project was executed by young Saudi engineers from both Project Management and Southern Area Oil Operations.”