RIYADH: Saudi Arabia’s oil giant Aramco is marking the start of its development of the Jafurah unconventional gas field on Nov. 29. 

The Saudi-listed firm claims it to be the “largest non-associated gas field” in the Kingdom. 

The move is part of the Kingdom’s push to commercialize its unconventional resources and expand Saudi Aramco’s integrated gas portfolio. 

The largest natural gas field in the Kingdom, stretching 170 km by 100 km, is estimated at 200 trillion cubic feet of rich raw gas.

The Jafurah field will place Saudi Arabia third in the world in natural gas production by 2030, the Ministry of Energy has said.

Aramco expects the production from the Jafurah field to commence in early 2024 and reach about 2.2 billion cubic feet of gas per day by 2036. The field will also be able to produce about 425 million cubic feet of ethane per day, and about 550 thousand barrels per day of gas liquids and condensates.

Saudi Aramco plans to develop Jafurah in accordance with the highest environmental standards. The company expects that the development of Jafurah would have a positive financial impact in the long term, which will start to show on the company’s financial results in phases concurrent to the field’s development, according to a statement posted on the oil company’s website.

The development of the gas field represents a strategic investment opportunity that will pay off in the years to come and help boost the economic growth of the country.

Saudi Aramco this year revived the tender process for the Jafurah’s engineering, procurement and construction packages, buoyed by the economic impacts of the global vaccination campaign against COVID-19 and resurgent oil prices.

It will also help achieve the Kingdom’s goal of cutting carbon emissions by replacing oil and its derivatives with gas for power generation.

The development of the Jafurah field will have ramifications not just for Saudi Arabia and its drive toward a cleaner energy mix, but also for the global gas market, with recent discoveries in the Eastern Mediterranean rapidly reshaping economies from Cairo to Ankara and fueling fierce rivalries in the process.