Saudi Aramco has almost finished the construction of its giant Wasit gas project, reported Gulf Business, but it is currently processing gas from the Karan gas field instead of the offshore fields as originally planned.

These are the Arabiyah and Hasbah offshore sour gas fields, but technical difficulties have held back plans to before the end of the year. This is non-associated gas, which contains no oil.

Gas from Arabiyah and Hasbah has a high hydrogen sulphide and carbon dioxide content. “If these plants are not scaled to the required capacity to remove all the H2S and C02 content of the Wasit inlet gas, it would mean the sales gas impurities would be higher than what the national gas grid can accept,” said Sadad al-Husseini, a former senior executive at Saudi Aramco.

According to Zawya, Saudi Aramco has declined to comment on this news.

The Hasbah field has seven single-well platforms and feeds the gas processing facility up to 1.3 b standard cubic feet per day while Arabiyah provides around 1.2 billion scfd.

Hasbah has a much higher H2 and CO2 than Arabiyah.