Halliburton Company held a ground-breaking ceremony on Monday in Saudi Arabia for the first oilfield chemical manufacturing reaction plant in the Kingdom. The plant, to be completed in 2020, will be sited at the service company’s PlasChem Park location in Jubail.
The plant will have capabilities to manufacture a broad slate of chemicals for stimulation, production, midstream, and downstream engineered treatment programs. Halliburton’s global laboratory and team in Dhahran Techno Valley and local manufacturing position the company to accelerate the production of next-generation specialty chemical solutions while developing local employees and capabilities, the company said in a press release.
Fluor Corp. announced on Monday that it was awarded the engineering, procurement, and construction of the plant. “Having completed the front-end engineering design, we are pleased to undertake the design and construction of this major investment that accelerates Halliburton’s strategic expansion of its fast-growing specialty chemicals business,” said Simon Nottingham, president of Fluor’s energy and chemicals business in Europe, Africa, and the Middle East.
Fluor’s Al Khobar office in Saudi Arabia will lead the project with the team that performed the previous front-end engineering design contract and will be supported by Fluor’s global chemicals experts.
In May 2018, Halliburton and Saudi Aramco signed an unconventional gas stimulation services contract to further improve the economics of Saudi Aramco’s unconventional resources program. Halliburton will provide project management, hydraulic fracturing, coiled tubing, wireline and perforating, completion tools, and testing services to support Saudi Aramco’s meeting its increased recovery and production targets.
“As a leader in unconventional resource development, we believe Halliburton will work best with Saudi Aramco to help in our pursuit of unconventional gas to serve domestic needs, offset local crude burning, provide feedstock for chemical industry development, and spur regional economic development in line with Vision 2030, the Kingdom’s national transformation program,” Mohammed Y. Qahtani, Saudi Aramco senior vice president of upstream, said in May.
