Saudi Aramco's gas processing plant at the 500,000 barrels per day (bpd) Khursaniyah oilfield is ready to start operations, the company's vice president for project management said.

'Khursaniyah gas plant is commissioning, the first unit finished and will produce tomorrow (Wednesday),' Majid Al-Mugla told reporters on the sidelines of an industry conference.

'The second unit will start production in two to three months,' he added.   

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

It has two natural gas liquids (NGL) trains and would also process gas from the Karan offshore field.

Delays in construction at the plant have put off the whole Khursaniyah oilfield development project, one of the largest in Saudi expansion plans as the kingdom boosted 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.   

The facility would have the capacity to produce 560 million cfd of sales gas and 280,000 barrels per day of ethane and natural gas liquids.

About 450 million cfd of gas from the first phase of the Karan gas project is expected to come online by mid-2011.

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