Aramco Awards $900 million Marjan Project to Saipem

Saipem, a leading company in the engineering, drilling and construction of major projects in the energy and infrastructure sectors, has been awarded two new contracts, one for EPCI offshore activities in the Middle East and the other for the development of underwater drones in Brazil. The overall amount of these new acquisitions is approximately $1 billion.

Under the existing Long-Term Agreement (LTA) with Saudi Aramco, Saipem, which is based in Milan in Italy, has been selected to be awarded a new offshore project. The Marjan project award is reportedly worth upwards of $900 million and represents one of Saipem’s largest offshore deals from Aramco this year.

Marjan offshore field’s production capacity will be increased by 300,000 barrels per day (bpd) to reach 800,000 bpd of Arabian Medium crude oil by 2025.

This integrated development project for oil, an additional 2.5 billion standard cubic feet per day of associated and non-associated gas, and 300,000 bpd of C2+NGL, includes a new offshore gas-oil separation plant (GOSP) known as Marjan GOSP-4, as well as 24 offshore oil, gas, and water injection platforms, and new transfer pipelines.

The scope of work involves the engineering, procurement, construction, and installation of five platforms and associated subsea pipelines, flowlines, and cables in the Marjan field, offshore Saudi Arabia, featuring an entirely in-Kingdom fabrication scheme. The effectiveness of the contract is subject to the fulfilment of the customary conditions’ precedent. 

“With this important award, Saipem further strengthens its long-standing relationship with Saudi Aramco and its strategic positioning in the Middle East,” the company said in an official release on Wednesday.

With this award, Saipem further strengthens its long-standing relationship with Saudi Aramco and its strategic positioning in the Middle East.

It may be recalled that Aramco is planning to award multiple LTA contracts worth about $4 billion this year to step up oil production from some of its largest offshore oilfields. The company weighs blue hydrogen and LNG among options for $100 billion-plus gas project.

The company also announced that its capital expenditure would be between $45 billion and $55 billion this year and keep growing until the middle of this decade as the demand for oil is expected to increase despite many countries looking at renewable energy sources.

Aramco Chief Executive Officer Amin Nasser said that almost 60% of the capital expenditure is likely to remain focused on the upstream sector in the short term, with the remainder expected to be shared between its downstream, low carbon and other businesses.

Petrobras Contract

Furthermore, Saipem has been awarded a contract by Petrobras for the development and testing of an autonomous subsea inspection robotic solution, which will be based on Saipem’s fleet of underwater drones, starting from the Flatfish AUV, as well as the qualification of related autonomous drone-based services, enabling future inspection contract options offshore Brazil.

This contract marks a fundamental milestone for Saipem’s innovative underwater robotics programme and for the global scale utilisation of subsea drones in offshore projects throughout the entire value chain, and it allows to extend to the new features to the Technology Readiness Level 8 (TRL8) achieved on Saipem’s fleet of subsea drones. The potential of these subsea technologies within the offshore domain is vast, both for oil and gas developments as well as for the renewables market segment.

Saipem is “one company” organized into five business lines – Asset Based Services, Energy Carriers, Offshore Wind, Sustainable Infrastructures, Robotics & Industrialized Solutions.

The company has nine fabrication yards and an offshore fleet of 29 construction vessels (of which 26 owned and 3 owned by third parties and managed by Saipem) and 15 drilling rigs, of which 8 owned. Always oriented towards technological innovation, Saipem is now committed to supporting its customers to accompany them on the energy transition path and Net Zero with increasingly digital means, technologies and processes geared towards environmental sustainability.

Listed on the Milan Stock Exchange, it is present in over 70 countries around the world and employs over 30,000 people of 130 nationalities.