Contractors are preparing bids for a new tender related to the installation of structures at the Marjan offshore oil and gas field in Saudi Arabia, which Saudi Aramco issued earlier in February.

Entities in Saudi Aramco’s Long-Term Agreement (LTA) pool of offshore service providers have until 16 March to submit bids for the tender, which is number 126 in Aramco’s Contracts Release & Purchase Order (CRPO) system.

Aramco previously set 5 March as the bid submission deadline.

The scope of work on CRPO 126 involves engineering, procurement, construction and installation (EPCI) of the following structures at the Marjan hydrocarbons field development:

• One gas lift production deck module
• Four jackets
• 16-inch subsea pipeline running 6.5 kilometres (km)
• 15kv subsea cables covering 6.5km

Aramco’s LTA pool of offshore service providers comprises the following entities:

• Saipem (Italy)
• McDermott International (US)
• Larsen & Toubro Hydrocarbon Engineering (India) / Subsea 7 (UK)
• Dynamic Industries (US)
• National Petroleum Construction Company (UAE)
• Lamprell (UAE/UK) / Royal Boskalis Westminster (Netherlands)
• Sapura Energy (Malaysia)
• Technip Energies (France) / MMHE (Malaysia)
• China Offshore Oil Engineering Company (China)
• Hyundai Heavy Industries (South Korea)

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High oil and gas prices significantly boosted Aramco’s profitability in 2022, resulting in considerable shareholder dividends. A robust financial performance has led Aramco to kickstart a period of increased capital expenditure (capex) on upstream projects.

Both Saudi Energy Minister Prince Abdulaziz bin Salman and Aramco president and CEO Amin Nasser have emphasised the state enterprise’s mandate to raise its oil production capacity to 13 million barrels a day by 2027 and to increase gas production by 50 per cent by the end of this decade.

Aramco has awarded key engineering, procurement and construction projects over the past two years to achieve these goals and has been issuing tenders for strategic greenfield and brownfield works, particularly since the third quarter of 2022.

The Saudi energy giant is pressing ahead with major offshore capex projects this year and is due to award up to 11 EPCI contracts worth more than $3bn by the end of the first quarter.

Aramco is also awaiting bids from LTA contractors on major projects such as the Safaniya increment scheme, which comprises 10 CRPO tenders.