Aramco chooses Mustang and Foster Wheeler for GES plus

23 February 2011

Oil giant selects only two out of seven for five-year deal, but says more contracts could be signed

Saudi Aramco has signed contracts with two groups as part of its general engineering plus (GES plus) programme.

The first consortium is the US’ Mustang Engineering with Faisal Jamel al-Hejailan Engineering Company (Mustang Hejailan), Dar al-Riyadh Engineering Consultants (DAR) and Petro-Infrastructure Engineering Consultants Company (PI Consult).

The US’ Foster Wheeler leads the other consortium and will work with the local A al-Saihati, A Fattani & O al-Othman Consulting Engineering Company (Sofcon) and Saudi Consolidated Engineering Company for Engineering Consultancy.

The news will come as a blow to the five other international engineering companies that were hoping to agree a deal with Saudi Aramco.

“This has come as a surprise to many of the bidders, because we all thought that we stood a good chance of being picked,” says one of the bidders. “The unsuccessful bidders at this stage are hoping that Aramco will agree terms with them at a later date, maybe over the coming months.”  

The unsuccessful bidders for GES plus are:

  • Jacobs (US)
  • KBR (US)
  • SNC Lavalin (Canada)
  • Technip (France)
  • Worley Parsons (Australia)

In a statement, Aramco said that further contract awards could be made once a number of undeclared requirements have been reached by the unsuccessful companies.

“I hope this can be sorted, because all seven of the international companies have spent a lot of money on developing their bids for the GES plus,” the source says. “And all of those [unsuccessful] bidders have got a lot of talented people.”

The original plan was to offer each consortium a minimum of 1 million man-hours of design work a year, but it is not clear this figure has been agreed to in the contract.

The GES plus is a five-year plan by Aramco aimed at conducting most of its engineering services requirements in the kingdom (MEED 26:11:10). The reasons behind this are to train and develop local talent in complex engineering and design work.

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