Abu Dhabi Gas Industries, known as Gasco, said yesterday that it had awarded a US$700 million contract to Spain's Tecnicas Reunidas for a major natural gas expansion project aimed at alleviating the emirate's gas shortage.
The contract is for "package 3" of the huge Integrated Gas Development (IGD) expansion project, which aims to yield 400 million cubic feet of gas from Abu Dhabi National Oil Company's offshore oilfields by 2017.
The extra supply is badly needed to meet domestic demand, which has been growing at a rate of 15 per cent a year and has required the country to import gas in recent years. Gasco said the new contract is the fourth to be awarded to the Spanish firm in Abu Dhabi.
“TR has successfully completed a project for the petrochemical complex of Borouge, the Sahil and Shah Field Development project, and it is just starting up the Shah Gas Gathering Centre,” Gasco said in a statement.
The project consists of several gas processing units, gas pipelines, condensate pipelines and all required interconnections.
It is part of the broader IGD project, led by the Abu Dhabi national energy companies Gasco, Adgas, and Adnoc.
Gasco completed the initial US$11 billion IGD project in 2013, facilitating the transfer of 1 billion cubic feet a day (cfd) of high-pressure gas from the offshore Umm Shaif field via Das Island to onshore processing facilities at Habshan and Ruwais. Shell, Total, and Partex also are partners in the IGD.
The $10bn Shah project, another of the emirate’s projects to add new gas, began producing gas at the end of last year. Adnoc and partner Occidental Petroleum are bringing Shah’s difficult-to-process “sour” (heavy in hydrogen sulphide) gas to market. Adnoc and Shell are also developing the Bab field’s sour gas.
amcauley@thenational.ae
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