<Four companies have expressed interest in bidding to work on unconventional gas production in Saudi Arabia, as the kingdom moves forward with its plans to develop shale gas fields, energy industry sources said. The four companies are South Korea's GS Engineering and Construction Services, Italy's Mari Technimont, Japan's JGC and Canada's SNC-Lavalin, the sources said. The Aramco project will include the construction of processing facilities, wellheads and gas pipelines in Tarif in northern Saudi Arabia, where the large mining project Waad Al Shamal is being built, the sources added.
The search for gas is one of the priorities of the Kingdom's economic policy, as it struggles to keep pace with rapidly growing domestic demand. Aramco plans to produce 200 million cubic feet per day of unconventional natural gas by 2018, to provide supplies for the Waad al-Shamal project and a power plant.

Saudi Arabia was inspired to explore its huge unconventional gas reserves by the shale gas boom in the United States, which turned it from the world's largest gas importer to an exporter. The kingdom, which has the world's fifth-largest proven gas reserves, expects domestic demand for natural gas, which it uses mainly for electricity generation, to nearly double by 2030, compared with 2011 levels of 3.5 trillion cubic feet per year.

Saudi Petroleum Minister Ali al-Naimi estimated the country's unconventional gas reserves at more than 600 trillion cubic feet.