Saudi Aramco's gas processing plant at the 500,000 barrels per day (bpd) Khursaniyah oilfield will be fully operational in June, the state oil giant said on Tuesday.

The gas plant has capacity to process around 1 billion cubic feet per day (cfd) of raw sour gas from the Abu Hadriya, Fadhili and Khursaniyah fields, producing around 560 million cfd of gas.

It has two natural gas liquids (NGL) processing facilities, known as trains, and would also process gas from the Karan offshore field. The plant would produce 280,000 barrels per day (bpd) of ethane and NGLs.

"The Khursaniyah Gas Plant neared completion in 2009, with the first gas trains, representing about 70 percent of the total plant capacity, mechanically complete by year-end," Aramco said in its 2009 annual review. "The plant is projected to be onstream in June 2010."

Delays in construction held back the start of the Khursaniyah oilfield  project, one of the largest Saudi expansion plans in a scheme completed last year to boost the kingdom's crude oil production capacity to 12.5 million bpd.

Khursaniyah oilfield started output in September 2008, even though the gas plant was incomplete. The whole project was initially scheduled to start in December 2007.

France's Technip and US Bechtel built the plant. – Reuters