Bahrain Petroleum Company (Bapco) has received bids and prices for the front-end engineering and design (feed) contract for the $9bn-plus rehabilitation and expansion of its Sitra refinery complex.

The US’ Bechtel is the lowest bidder for the feed contract, after submitting a bid of $49.4m.

The bidders were:

• Bechtel (US): $49.4m
• CB&I Lummus (US): $56.3m               
• Technip (France): $63.5m

A consortium of Japan’s JGC Corporation and the US’ KBR did not submit a bid and Australia’s WorleyParsons had its bid suspended.   

The bids will now be evaluated by Bapco and a winning bidder will be confirmed by the second quarter of 2014. The man hours for the feed is expected to be about 1 million.

Bapco is already evaluating bids for the project management consultancy (PMC) contract. The bidders are:

• Engineers India (India) $124.6m
• Foster Wheeler (US) $189.7m

The rehabilitation has been split into four packages and the feed will cover all of these. These are:

• Offsites and utilities
• Crude unit and associated facilities
• Hydrocracker and associated units
• Residue conversion project

The residue conversion unit has been identified as the most important facility as it will process heavier crude types into lighter-grade products.

Another possible strategy is to build the residue conversion unit first and use the money generated from that unit to fund the remaining work.

The technology provider contract is expected to be tendered via Bahrain’s tender board in mid-2014. The probable date has been set for July, unless Bapco’s engineering team identifies a specific provider as being the only company capable of providing the right technology. In that case, a formal negotiation will take place between the two parties.

About 220,000 barrels a day (b/d) of oil is currently provided by Saudi Arabia’s state oil company Saudi Aramco, with 40,000 b/d coming from Bahrain’s own reserves. The exact increase in capacity that Bapco’s rehabilitation and expansion will provide has not been released. Industry sources told MEED in June that the figure should be about 100,000 b/d.

The vast majority of the additional capacity will be middle distillates or diesel fuel.