[Saudi Arabia] Manifa

escveritas
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[Saudi Arabia] Manifa

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There are many reasons why the Manifa oil field project is extraordinary. And perhaps more than any of our other mega-projects, it demonstrates what can be achieved when we apply creativity, determination, and our engineering prowess to delivering solutions to the seemingly impossible.

A jewel in the crown

The journey began back in 1957, when the Manifa oil field was discovered – a huge six-reservoir field stretching 45km long and 18km wide, lying in less than 15 metres of water. However, it’s not just a treasure trove of oil and gas hiding beneath the bay, but also a delicate habitat of seagrass and coral reefs. The turquoise waters are teeming with marine life, from pearl oysters to sea snakes, shrimps, crabs, dolphins and sea turtles, including the endangered Hawksbill turtle. It’s also a safe haven for migratory birds. As the oil lay just beneath the shallow waters, it presented a major environmental challenge. Conventional shallow water drill rigs could damage the fragile marine environment. A risk we weren’t willing to take.

“The challenge was to reach the oil without destroying the environment, so the team had to think outside the box, and come up with a radical solution.”

Faisal Nughaimish, Drilling General Supervisor
Manifa Bay plays an essential role for humans too. It acts as the lifeblood not only for fishermen and their communities. With an ecosystem sensitive to overfishing and pollution, preserving this underwater ‘museum’ was critical to our corporate and community objectives.

So in 2006, with an initial investment of $10 billion, the adventure to find the best way to produce oil from a shallow, ecologically-delicate, offshore oil field sprang into action.

Rising to the challenge

We began with an intensive planning phase. We’d need a revolutionary new approach. We’d need engineers, environmental protection officials, scientists, geologists, and marine specialists. We’d need to deploy innovative drilling techniques in the shallow waters. We’d need technology that didn’t exist yet. We’d need extensive engineering and ecological assessments, to make sure the marine ecosystem wouldn’t be affected. Finally, we’d need to learn from other similar projects, to avoid any potential pitfalls in construction.

The number of obstacles were daunting. But our engineering heritage had already enabled us to complete many extreme engineering projects, transforming our company into the world’s unprecedented production powerhouse. Here’s how we did it at Manifa Bay.

Giant sized Engineering

To avoid damaging the fragile ecosystem, our engineers needed to devise a radical new approach. They shunned the easy option of building 30 offshore platforms, and came up with the idea to convert over 70% of the field into an onshore field.

This ground-breaking design meant creating 27 man-made islands, each one the size of 10 soccer pitches, all made from 45 million cubic meters of sand reclaimed from the seabed. The islands would act as onshore drill sites above the offshore oil field, and would be linked by a 41-km causeway. Being a company of engineers as well as oil experts was key to the project.

Perfecting our ideas

Originally the plan was to build the causeway from coast to coast across the bay. However, before beginning construction we commissioned extensive research into this sensitive and important marine environment, in partnership with the King Fahd University of Petroleum and Minerals (KFUPM). It showed the need to maintain water circulation and allow marine life to move freely from deep to shallow water. We therefore factored in an opening between causeway and coastline, and 13 bridges up to 2.4-km in length were added, to keep the ocean currents circulating naturally and dispersing vital nutrients and oxygen throughout the bay.

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The research also allowed us to carefully position the man-made islands and causeway, to preserve the coral reefs, avoid interfering with the migration paths of various marine species, and make sure the bay remained a perfect environment for shrimp and fish populations to grow.

Our designers and engineers spent 4 million hours on the design phase alone, with 136,149 engineering drawings and plans to perfect the 27 islands, 13 bridges, 13 offshore platforms, 15 onshore drill sites, 350 new wells, injection facilities, multiple pipelines, and a 420-megawatt heat and electricity plant.

Bringing new technology to life

Below ground, the challenges were no less demanding. As the six enormous reservoirs of up to 40 km long are stacked one on top of the other, we had to invent new technology from scratch. And so we built the nuclear magnetic resonance tool especially for Manifa, to create real time 3D profiles of the reservoir layers. This allowed geologists to accurately tap into reserves at extreme distances, through a heavy layer of tar, from wells on the surface.

Powering ahead

In 2013, oil production began three months ahead of schedule and more than US$ 1 billion under budget. With our ingrained commitment to quality, we carried out more than 5,000 visits to vendors and manufacturers to check the quality of the project’s materials. By July 2013, the project’s first milestone to produce 500,000 barrels of oil per day was achieved, and by 2017 the ultimate target of 900,000 per day was reached.

To process this amount of oil, we developed the Manifa Central Processing Facility, which has three identical gas-oil separation plants (GOSPs), each designed to treat 300,000 barrels per day for delivery to other refineries in the Kingdom: 1) SATORP, a world class refinery marking a partnership between Saudi Aramco and TOTAL; 2) YASREF, a joint venture between Saudi Aramco and China Petrochemical Corporation (Sinopec); and 3) Jazan Refinery, wholly owned and operated by Saudi Aramco. And over 9,000 km of pipes and cables were used, both above and below water, to deliver the oil to our customers.

The project received the “Innovative Oil Project of the Year” award by using best-in-class technologies in infrastructure, drilling and production activities, and because it involved more than 80 million hours without injury – one of the best safety records in the industry.
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