State-refiner Kuwait National Petroleum Company (KNPC) plans to award more than $30bn-worth of engineering, procurement and construction (EPC) contracts for its major downstream megaprojects by the end of 2014, driving forwards the country’s plans to revitalise its hydrocarbons sector.

Speaking at MEED’s Kuwait Projects 2013 conference in Kuwait City, officials from subsidiaries of state-owned Kuwait Petroleum Corporation (KPC) outlined the schedules for the refinery schemes, as well as several other projects, with a total combined budget value of more than $50bn. They will be completed over the next decade.

With a total budget of KD4.6bn ($16.25bn), the Clean Fuels Project (CFP) is the largest of the schemes. Abdulla Fahad al-Ajmi, KNPC’s project manager for scheme, is confident EPC bids will be submitted by the 24 December deadline with no further bid extensions planned.

“We have received and answered a number of queries, but we believe we have given contractors a fair opportunity to submit competitive bids,” he said.

The project, which covers the expansion and rehabilitation of Kuwait’s three existing refineries, has been split into three EPC packages, which will be awarded by April 2014, according to Al-Ajmi.

Following closely behind is the New Refinery Project (NRP), which will see the construction of a 615,000 barrel-a-day (b/d) grassroots refinery, the largest ever to be built in a single phase.

“We are aware that the NRP is a national project and there will be challenges, but momentum is building,” said Khaled Anwar al-Awadhi, the NRP’s manager.

The NRP has been tendered twice before, but cancelled under intense scrutiny by Kuwait’s fractious parliament. KNPC will launch the project in February 2014, with contract awards scheduled for December. The project has an overall budget of KD4bn ($14.1bn), covering its entire costs, including EPC contracts, designs and long lead-time purchases.

KNPC is considering some critical changes to the NRP tender to deal with the potential challenges of handling two giant megaprojects almost in tandem. One of the most important is reducing the number of EPC packages to four from the original five.

“Process packages one and two were combined to reduce the contractors’ interface and performance risks, as well as providing economies of scope and scale,” said Al-Awadhi.

The government has formed a committee consisting of undersecretaries from various concerned ministries and KPC officials to manage the logistical challenges. In particular, they face the prospect of a peak demand of 100,000 labourers once both projects get going.

Preparations for the project at the NRP site, a 16.2 million-square-metre area in the south of Kuwait, are due to be completed by May 2016. The refinery will be commissioned by February 2019.

So far, KNPC has not announced the prequalified firms who will bid on the four EPC packages, despite receiving applications almost a year ago, at the same time as the CFP. The UK’s Amec is the project management contractor (PMC) on the project.

“The assessment has not been concluded yet,” said Al-Awadhi. “We will wait for the Clean Fuels bids before announced the prequalification results for the NRP.”

Progress on the two refining schemes could provide a platform for Kuwait to push further downstream integration. KNPC and its sister company, Petrochemical Industries Company (PIC) has launched two studies to include integrated petrochemicals facilities (the Olefines 3 and an Aromatics plants) with the NRP.

US engineering firms Fluor and Foster Wheeler, are carrying out feasibility studies for a new mixed-feed olefins cracker and aromatics plant, which will be completed by the end of the year.