State oil giant Saudi Aramco received on December 29 construction bids for a natural gas liquids (NGL) project in its Shaybah oilfield.

Shaybah NGL is one of two new gas projects Aramco plans to develop to boost gas output and meet domestic demand rising at 5-6 per cent annually.

Shaybah NGL is designed to process 2.4 billion cubic feet per day (cfd) of low-sulphur sweet gas and extract 264,000 bpd of NGL which will be shipped to the Juaymah Gas Plant for further fractionation.

Construction deals for Shaybah NGL will be awarded in the first quarter of this year and the plant would come on stream in late 2014, Khalid al-Falih, Aramco's chief executive said in December.

The project calls for the construction of an NGL recovery plant, a cogeneration facility, a gas treatment facility, and gas handling facilities to debottleneck Shaybah's gas-oil separation plants (GOSP).

Aramco signed in December with US General Electric deals related to the third construction package of the project.-Reuters