GE’s Baker Hughes (BHGE) has revealed its plans to come up with an oilfield services (OFS) facility in King Salman Energy Park (SPARK), a new energy city megaproject, which is being built in Saudi Arabia.
Image: Illustration of SPARK energy city in Saudi Arabia. Photo: courtesy of Saudi Arabian Oil Co.
BHGE said that the new facility in SPARK will feature three OFS product lines in the form of drilling services, wireline services and pressure pumping, to support customer activities that are in progress.
The GE subsidiary said that the facility will be an operational and service support center. It expects the OFS facility to complement the founding objective of SPARK to become a global hub for manufacturing services pertaining to the energy sector.
Saudi Aramco upstream senior vice president Mohammed Al Qahtani said: “We encourage investments in localized infrastructure that will support our operational processes and also contribute to in-Kingdom total value creation.
“BHGE’s new oilfield services facility is a significant step in this direction, which not only meets our operational needs but will also contribute to the larger Saudi economy through exports and job creation.”
Earlier this week, construction began at the 50km2 SPARK energy city. The first phase of the energy city megaproject, which is expected to see an investment of about $1.6bn, is slated to be completed by 2021.
BHGE chairman and CEO Lorenzo Simonelli said: “We have been partnering in the Kingdom to support oil and gas growth since 1938. This new facility will help build a new ecosystem for oilfield services within SPARK and support our commitments to invest in innovation, supply chain growth and training of new talent.”
BHGE has more than 10 facilities in Saudi Arabia for manufacturing, maintenance and R&D and has a workforce of more than 2,700 employees in the country.
Some of the facilities operated by the company in Saudi Arabia are a drill bits manufacturing facility, an assembly, maintenance and overhaul workshop, a completions and well intervention facility, a pressure control facility, and a turbomachinery and process solutions facility.
Earlier this month, BHGE was awarded a stimulation and well-testing contract from Saudi Aramco as part of its efforts to increase production from its conventional fields in Saudi Arabia.
As per the terms of the three-year contract, the GE subsidiary will provide a comprehensive well services solution, which includes well testing, all cased-hole wireline logging, perforation, fracturing, stimulation and related intervention services among others.