(Yicai) June 7 -- Shares of Sinopec Oilfield Service rose after a unit of the oilfield construction arm of China Petroleum and Chemical Corporation, i.e. Sinopec, secured a nearly CNY8 billion (USD1.1 billion) turn-key fixed-price contract from Saudi Aramco.

Sinopec Oilfield [SHA: 600871] closed up 1.7 percent at CNY1.78 (25 US cents) in Shanghai today, after earlier gaining as much as 4 percent.

Sinopec Petroleum Services has been appointed by Saudi Aramco as the procurement and construction contractor of Packages 6 and 7 of the Phase 3 Pipeline Project Clusters of the Master Gas System in Saudi Arabia, the Beijing-based parent company announced yesterday. The mechanical completion is expected to be on May 31, 2027.

The contract covers the part of the natural gas pipeline and related ancillary facilities, with a total length of 696 km, Sinopec Oilfield noted.

This is the second major contract signed by a major Chinese oil and gas firm involving Phase 3 of the MSG in just over a month. On April 26, a subsidiary of China National Petroleum Corporation announced it had signed a SAR5.2 billion agreement to install new compression trains and build supporting facilities in three booster gas compression stations along the MGS.

Phase 3 Pipeline Project Clusters of the MGS is the third phase of the development of Saudi Aramco’s commodity natural gas pipeline project, aiming to extend the existing national gas transmission network to the southwest region of the country, while the parallel branch pipelines will be responsible for transporting gases to major end-users nationwide. The total length of the proposed main pipeline is about 2,630 kilometers, and that of the proposed sales pipeline is around 1,340 km.

Editor: Futura Costaglione