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WEEKLY NEWSLETTER
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Saudi Arabia
Index
The structure of the master gas system--a system of gasgathering facilities and pipelines that collect associated gas as
a by-product of oil and nonassociated gas--reflected both its
original design and changes made during the latter half of the
1980s. At first it was anticipated that the master gas system
would distribute and process gas produced in association with
crude oil. However, declining crude oil output in the mid-1980s
forced Saudi Aramco to supplement the system's gas feed by
developing the kingdom's nonassociated gas resources. The current
structure of the master gas system consists of sixty GOSPs in
Khurays, As Saffaniyah, Al Ghawar, and Az Zuluf fields; three
gas-processing plants located at Al Barri, Shadqam, and Al
Uthmaniyah; the east-west natural gas liquids (NGL) pipeline that
feeds NGL from Shadqam to Yanbu; and two gas fraction plants at
Yanbu and Al Juaymah. Saudi Aramco also added about 57 million
cubic meters per day of nonassociated gas-gathering capacity to
the master gas system. Furthermore, it installed facilities
capable of producing up to almost 13 million cubic meters per day
from the Abqaiq gas cap to meet peak demand, and 1.7 million
cubic meters per day from the Qatif storage reservoir for
emergency use. The system had the capacity to gather about 170
million cubic meters per day of unprocessed gas.
In 1992 the master gas system could produce about 600,000 bpd
of NGL when operating at full capacity, which included 315,000
bpd of propane, 165,000 bpd of butane, and 120,000 bpd of natural
gas. Saudi Arabia's refineries contributed another 40,000 bpd of
liquid petroleum gas (LPG - propane and butane). The kingdom was
the world's largest LPG exporter with a 30 percent market share
of world seaborne trade in LPG.
Despite the impressive capabilities of the system, it had
several shortcomings. The system lacked sufficient associated
gas-gathering facilities; as a result, substantial amounts of gas
were flared or used in reinjection. Furthermore, there were
insufficient processing plants once the gas was collected.
Therefore, only about 113 million cubic meters per day of a total
of nearly 170 million cubic meters per day of raw gas was
processed. Finally, the government's domestic pricing policy,
whereby gas was available to customers at US$0.50 per million
British thermal units, yielded insufficient revenues to finance
further gas-processing facilities.
Data as of December 1992
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