Saudi Aramco has hired a US engineering firm to upgrade an offshore oil field it shares with Iran, which has fallen far behind several neighbors in developing shared energy reserves.
KBR said on October 6 that it would provide engineering and project execution services for offshore processing facilities, gas compression and power systems at Marjan in the Persian Gulf. The work is intended to maintain production capacity and improve associated-gas processing. The company did not disclose the contract’s value.
The award follows a wider expansion of Marjan, whose total budget was put at $21 billion by industry publication Oil & Gas Middle East in a 2023 report.
Aramco said the Marjan project added 300,000 barrels a day of production capacity at the end of 2025. The expansion was designed to bring the field’s capacity to 800,000 barrels a day.
Iran calls its side of the reservoir Forouzan. Iran Open Data estimated Iranian production at about 35,000 barrels a day in a January 21 assessment, attributing the country’s wider difficulties developing shared fields to underinvestment and management constraints.
Saudi Arabia has also expanded its gas-processing infrastructure. Aramco said the Tanajib plant began operations in December 2025 and was expected to reach a raw-gas processing capacity of 2.6 billion cubic feet a day in 2026, handling supplies from both Marjan and Zuluf.
On the Iranian side, the Oil Ministry’s SHANA news agency reported in February that a project to collect gas otherwise burned off at Forouzan and other offshore fields was 76% complete. It said operations were expected to begin in 2028, subject to financing.
Saudi Arabia and Kuwait advance disputed gas project
Saudi Arabia and Kuwait are also moving ahead with development of the Durra offshore gas field, which Iran calls Arash and claims a share of.
Industry publication MEED reported in August that Al-Khafji Joint Operations had awarded contracts for two offshore packages and one onshore package worth an estimated $6.7 billion. The venture is jointly owned by Aramco Gulf Operations Company and Kuwait Gulf Oil Company, subsidiaries of the two countries’ state energy companies.
Iran says part of the field extends into its waters and that it should participate in development. Saudi Arabia and Kuwait reject that claim and maintain that rights to the field belong exclusively to them.
Iran’s wider production gap
The disparity extends to fields Iran shares with other neighbors. In its January assessment, Iran Open Data estimated UAE production from shared oil fields at 130,000 barrels a day, against 58,000 for Iran.
It put Iraq’s extraction from shared oil fields at roughly twice Iran’s and Qatar’s oil-layer output from the South Pars/North Field reservoir at 13 times Iran’s.
Oman was an exception: the assessment put each country’s production from the Hengam field, known as West Bukha in Oman, at about 10,000 barrels a day.
Iran’s national crude production has since fallen sharply during the war. The International Energy Agency estimated output at 2.16 million barrels a day in August, down from 3.59 million in February—a decline of about 40%.
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