Saudi Arabia, Eastern Province
June 2026
Source: Saipem / Saudi Aramco / Industry Reports
Saipem, through its jointly controlled entity Saipem Nasser Saeed Al-Hajri Contracting Company (SNSH), has been awarded an EPC contract by Saudi Aramco for the Uthmaniyah Gas Compression Plant in the Eastern Province. The contract is valued at approximately €900 million (~$1.03 billion) with a 42-month duration.
The scope covers engineering, procurement, and construction of a new compression plant serving the Uthmaniyah non-associated gas field, extending the field's production life and supporting the Kingdom's growing energy demand. This is the first EPC project awarded under a new Aramco framework agreement, signalling more packages to come.
Workforce Implications Although onshore, this $1 billion contract has direct talent market consequences for the Middle East offshore sector. In Saudi Arabia's Eastern Province, onshore and offshore EPC projects draw from the same pool of engineers, project managers, HSE specialists, and construction supervisors. A contract of this scale and duration will absorb significant EPC capacity, tightening availability of experienced personnel for concurrent offshore programmes — including Aramco's CRPO series of offshore pipeline tenders and ADNOC's offshore gas expansion pipeline.
Saudi localisation requirements further elevate scarcity of bilingual Saudi-national engineers, forcing international contractors to offer premium packages to meet Nitaqat quotas and inflating overall labour costs across both onshore and offshore project portfolios.