Bahrain’s Oil Minister Sheikh Mohammed bin Khalifa Al Khalifa has said that the state-owned Bahrain Patroleum Company (Bapco) will sign the formal contract with a consortium of foreign engineering contractors for its modernisation and refinery expansion project, later this month.

MEED reported earlier this month that the consortium led by France’s Technip FMC, and including Spain’s Tecnicas Reunidas and South Korea’s Samsung Engineering, was awaiting the formal agreement of the contract worth $4.2bn from Bapco.

The three companies had however said that they had received a letter on 4 December notifying them about the contract award. The formal contract was expected to be signed by the end of last year.

Al Khalifa said the expansion works for the Sitra refinery would begin “within a period of 48-50 months” or by 2021, and that the refining capacity is expected to reach 400,000 barrels a day (b/d), from the current 267,000 b/d output.