Manifa Oil Field Development Program – Onshore And Offshore Shallow Water Development

Abstract The Manifa Oil Field is located approximately 200 km northwest of Dhahran and lies mainly offshore in shallow waters. The field was discovered in 1957, and was brought on-stream in 1964. Due to low crude oil demand, the production from the Manifa Oil Field was stopped in 1984, and the facilities were mothballed in 1985. In 1995, the existing GOSP facilities were dismantled. In 2006, Saudi Aramco embarked on the development of a mega-project at the Manifa shallow water offshore oil field to develop the field and construct the required infrastructure and facilities for a production capacity of 900,000 barrels per day of Arab Heavy crude oil. This new development at Manifa can be classified as being a true grassroots venture, as it converts an offshore field into an onshore project, which is the largest extended reach project of its kind in the world. During the project execution, the team navigated through many challenges considering the extremely large magnitude of the program. Such challenges include oil field development options, the integration of the drill sites with the pipeline system, the causeway design and options, the crude transportation pipelines configuration, compatible facilities metallurgy, the electrical power system architecture and the collection, transportation, integration, analysis and reporting of data collected from the drill sites through the massive RTU and SCADA systems. Once the conceptual development design for the program was complete and agreed by all stakeholders, the sequence of facilities completion had to be planned in a manner to support the project completion schedule. The integrated activities schedule had to interlink with the well's drilling activities, flow lines installation and the onshore plant readiness simultaneously, overcome the limited space in the man-made island, work through simultaneous operations between drilling and the construction agency, while also monitoring the environmental marine life in the shallow waters of the Manifa bay and enforcing high levels of safety standards by performing periodic safety drills. This paper covers mainly the design of the offshore facilities and the Manifa Causeway and does not discuss in detail the onshore facilities and infrastructure, which is another large aspect of the overall Manifa Program.