The UAE’s largest onshore oil producer has invited companies to bid for the engineering, procurement and construction (EPC) tender on a major project at the Bab oil and gas field, according to sources

Abu Dhabi Company for Onshore Petroleum Operations (Adco) has re-tendered the Bab Integrated Facilities Expansion scheme a year after cancelling a previous tender on the project.

Adco floated the new tender on 22 December 2016 and has asked EPC contractors to submit technical bids by 14 February, sources said.

Contractors submitted commercial bids for a previous tender on Bab Integrated Facilities Expansion in 2015 but MEED reported in December that year that the bidding process had been cancelled. Sources said at the time that Adco was reducing the scope. It is unclear what the latest scope of the project comprises.

Spain’s Intecsa was reported to have submitted the lowest bid for the initial tender valued at about $3bn.

Companies prequalified to bid on the new tender are understood to include:

• GS Engineering & Construction (South Korea)
• Hyundai Engineering & Construction (South Korea)
• Intecsa (Spain)
• JGC (Japan)
• Petrofac (UK)
• Saipem (Italy)
• Samsung Engineering (South Korea)
• Tecnicas Reunidas (Spain)

If Adco had awarded the contract at about $3bn, it would have been the large onshore oil project deal in the UAE for at least a decade. The revision of the project scope suggests the revived scheme will be lower in value.

The scope involves installing new facilities at Adco’s Bab field, located 160 kilometres southwest of Abu Dhabi city. As part of the original scope, surface facilities would be delivered for the Thamama-A, Thamama-H and Thamama-B production zones to achieve a total sustainable oil production rate of 450,000 barrels a day (b/d).

Adco is a joint venture of state-owned Abu Dhabi National Oil Company, France’s Total (10 per cent), UK-based BP (10 per cent) Japan’s Inpex (5 per cent) and South Korea’s GS Energy (3 per cent). The onshore operator is expected to award more stakes to bring the interest held by international oil companies to a total of 40 per cent.

Total’s CEO Patrick Pouyanne, speaking at the Adipec conference in Abu Dhabi in November, said that the French group had stepped in to manage the Bab integrated asset on an interim basis to keep the expansion on track.

“We are interim leader on Bab… and that is one way you can improve your returns,” Abu Dhabi newspaper The National reported Pouyanne as saying.

“The objective was to help Adnoc put into place all of the plans that we have approved because when we came into the two [assets] with Adco it was a vision that the production would increase so it is in our interest, of course, to help Adco to increase its production, it is why we offered to bring in more people,” he added.