Abu Dhabi-based National Petroleum Construction Company (NPCC), Dubai-based J Ray McDermott, Holland’s Heerema Fabrication Group, South Korea's Hyundai Heavy Industries and Italy's Snamprogetti resubmitted bids on 21 December.

It followed Aramco launching a review of the Karan development in early November in response to the fall in oil and commodity prices (MEED 5:11:08).

The state-run firm had previously hoped to select a winner by 5 January but this is likely to be pushed back to later in the month.

The firms originally submitted bids on 1 November, just as Aramco launched its review of several high profile upstream projects including Karan and Manifa.

An executive at one firm bidding for the award tells MEED it made a small cut in its price and was now waiting to hear from Aramco for its decision.

The scope of the project covers two flare structures and bridges, three natural gas processing platforms, up to 10 well-head platforms and a 36-inch export pipeline measuring 110 kilometres (MEED 11:11:08).

Earlier in 2008 it was revealed that Aramco would increase capacity at the field by more than 50 per cent as it aims to keep pace with soaring domestic demand (MEED 11:7:08).

The offshore field, which is understood to contain more than 9 trillion cubic feet of gas, was originally slated to produce 1 billion cubic feet a day (cf/d) of gas, but this figure has been increased to 1.8 billion cf/d.

The Karan field is about 100km north of the world's largest onshore oil field, Ghawar.