SAUDI ARABIA - Shaybah.

A super-giant discovered in the early 1970s - with light/sweet oil in place having been estimated at about 14.3 bn, including 7 bn barrels recoverable, plus 25 TCF of gas - Shaybah came on stream in mid-1998 for tests. Its capacity reached 500,000 b/d in early 1999 and it was inaugurated in March 1999. Other projects include the phase 2 expansion of Shaybah, which will add 300,000 b/d of extra light crude by 2008.

A group of Jacobs Engineering with SNC Lavalin and the local Saudi Consulting Services (SaudConsult) is carrying out the FEED package on the expansion of Shaybah. The Shaybah expansion involves installation of new wet crude handling facilities, dehydration and desalter units, a GOSP, pipelines and gas reinjection facilities. The total project cost is estimated to be about $3,000m.

AEL from the field is transferred through a pipeline to Abqaiq for blending with AL. About 880 MCF/d of gas is reinjected into the field (see background in Vol. 61, No. 14).

The Divided Zone: The divided (formerly "neutral") zone is shared equally by Kuwait and Saudi Arabia, under a treaty signed on Dec. 2, 1922 to settle a territorial dispute between the two countries. The treaty was revised on July 7, 1965. The joint administration accord was supplemented in 1969 by an agreement whereby the northern half was administered by Kuwait and the southern part was administered by Saudi Arabia. An undivided half interest in all resources was maintained over the entire area by each state. A joint Kuwaiti-Saudi committee oversees exploitation of these resources.

Texaco (now part of Chevron), which has the onshore concession to 2010 in the northern half, shares its area's oil production equally with Kuwait. Saudi Arabia gets taxes and royalties on Texaco's share.

Texaco's oil production capacity reached 300,000 b/d in mid-1999. It had risen after the Gulf war from 100,000 b/d in 1991/92 to 120,000 b/d in 1995 and 270,000 b/d in late 1998 and the first half of 1999. This should rise to 420,000 b/d this year. Texaco operates three onshore oilfields: Wafra, South Fuwaris and South Umm Gudair (see their profiles in the Kuwait survey in Vol. 64). The former US operator onshore, Getty Oil, was sold to Texaco in 1984.

Aramco Gulf Operations Co. (AGOC) is a unit of Saudi Aramco set up at end-February 2000 to take over half the operations of Arabian Oil Co. (AOC) of Japan - which had the offshore concession to February 2000 on the Saudi side and to Jan. 4, 2003 on the Kuwaiti side. AOC lost both concessions and now works as a service contractor for Kuwait Gulf Oil Co. (KGOC).