Saudi Arabian oil company Aramco announced that it awarded subsurface and Engineering, Procurement and Construction (EPC) contracts valued at $10 billion for developing the vast Jafurah unconventional gas field, the largest non-associated gas field in the Kingdom.

The company added that over the first 10 years of development, capital expenditure at Jafurah is expected to reach $68 billion. The Jafurah basin has an estimated 200 trillion standard cubic feet (tscf) of gas in place.

It is expected that Jafurah’s natural gas production will increase from 200 million standard cubic feet per day (mscf/d) in 2025 to achieve an impressive gas rate of 2 billion standard cubic feet per day (bscf/d) of sales gas by 2030. In addition, production can also reach 418 mscfd of ethane and around 630,000 barrels per day of gas liquids and condensates, which are essential feedstock for the growing petrochemical industry. It will make Saudi Arabia one of the world’s largest natural gas producers.

On this occasion Abdulaziz bin Salman Al Saud, Minister of Energy for the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia said, “The development of Jafurah will positively contribute to the Kingdom’s energy mix and it has been made possible thanks to close co-operation between more than 17 different agencies.”

“The government is committed to the empowerment of national companies such as Aramco and no other energy company in the world is empowered to the same extent by the state, or by the Ministry of Energy which oversees the concession to develop the Kingdom’s hydrocarbon resources,” Al Saud added.

The project is a fundamental pillar of the company’s long-term strategy and Aramco has expectations that the total overall lifecycle investment at Jafurah will be over $100 billion. From an employment perspective, 200,000 direct and indirect jobs will be created from its unconventional gas program at the Jafurah, North Arabia and South Ghawar fields.