The refining unit of Abu Dhabi National Oil Company (Adnoc Refining) has extended the closing date for commercial bids for the main engineering, procurement and construction (EPC) contract on its $2.5bn gasoline and aromatics project (GAP) to 22 January.

MEED earlier reported that Adnoc Refining was making alterations to the scope of work on the project, which was likely to result in a postponement of the bid deadline to give contractors time to prepare for the project’s new requirements.

The previous bid submission deadline for GAP was 25 December.

This is the second extension of the bid submission date for the main contract, with an initial date of 6 November.

Technical bids for the EPC works were submitted on 25 October.

As many as a dozen prequalified contractors are understood to be in the fray for GAP’s EPC contract. MEED has not yet been able to verify the full list of bidders.

The GAP facility will have the capacity to produce 4.2 million tonnes a year (t/y) of gasoline and 1.6 million t/y of aromatics.

The integrated production complex will include light and heavy naphtha hydrotreater units, light naphtha isomerisation units and two heavy naphtha reformer units.

It will also include an aromatics extraction unit, as well as paraxylene and benzene production units.

The UK’s Wood Group is executing the front-end engineering and design (feed) works on the GAP, while US-based Jacobs is providing project management consultancy (PMC) services for the feed aspect of the project.