Saudi Aramco has awarded China Harbour Engineering Company a contract to construct two artificial drilling islands as part of the Berri offshore oil field development.

Saudi Aramco awarded the contract as part of its Berri Increment Program (BIP), which has a target of producing an additional 250,000 barrels per day of Arabian Light crude oil from the Berri filed, which lies partially onshore and partially offshore.

A signing ceremony to mark the contract award was held in Dhahran on 11 September. The contract was signed by Saudi Aramco vice president of project management, Fahad Al-Helal, and Wu Yuansheng, general manager of China Harbour Engineering Arabia.

China Harbour Engineering expects to complete the project by the middle of 2020. The two drilling islands will be constructed near shore at the north and south sides of the King Fahad Industrial Port (KFIP) causeway in Jubail, to support the Berri field production capacity islands.

The two drill sites referred to as Site A and Site B will have an approximate overall area of 616,553 square metres and 263,855 square metres, respectively.

The project includes the installation of a new gas oil separation plant (GOSP) in Abu Ali Island and additional gas processing facilities at the Khursaniyah Gas Plant (KGP) to process 40,000 barrels per day of hydrocarbon condensate associated with the Berri Crude Increment. Related pipelines, water injection facilities, onshore drilling sites, drilling islands and offshore facilities are also included.

As ties between China and Saudi Arabia get stronger, Chinese companies have been winning sizeable contracts.

In its latest earnings report, Sinopec Engineering said that early in 2018 the group entered into a new EPC contract for the Saudi Sabic Gas Phase-9 Air Separation Project with a total contract value of about 1.76 billion yuan.

Sinopec Engineering is also co-operating on projects with Saudi Basic Industries Corporation in China. In the first half of the year it signed an EPC contract for the Sinopec Sabic Project with a total contract value of around 4.586 billion yuan. Sinopec Engineering is a subsidiary of Sinopec.

The Sinopec Sabic Tianjin Petrochemical Company (SSTPC), a 50:50 joint venture, is in the startup phase of building a polycarbonate plant in the port city of Tianjin. It is expected to be operational by 2020, and is being built alongside an existing facility which SSTPC started up in 2010.

Sabic is also reported to be considering plans to build its own petrochemical complex in Fujian province as part of a strategy to diversify its business globally.