About 10 local and international contractors have been invited to bid by Saudi Aramco for the conversion of the existing Abqaiq-Yanbu oil looped line (AY-1L) into a gas pipeline (EWG-1). The project is one of several pipeline schemes being tendered by Aramco (MEED 20:5:05).

The companies invited to bid by 17 July for the estimated $150 million-200 million, lump-sum turnkey (LSTK) contract include: R H Al-Marri Establishment (RHM), Faysal M Qahtani Establishment (FMQ)and Tamimi Construction, all local; Lebanon's Contracting & Trading (CAT); Italy's Saipem; Russia's Stroytransgas; the Netherlands' Suedrohrbau; Italy-based Techint; Turkey's Tekfen ;and US-based Willbros Group.

US-based Bechtel carried out the front-end engineering and design (FEED) for the project, which calls for decruding, cleaning and purging the existing 56-inch-diameter, 1,170-kilometre-long AY-1L line, which runs parallel to the 48-inch Abqaiq-Yanbu (AY-1) pipeline. The renovated pipeline will deliver sales gas to the growing industrial zone in Yanbu. The contract also calls for fabrication, construction, installation, pre-commissioning and commissioning of the EWG-1 line and related communication facilities.

On a separate pipeline project, being tendered as part of Aramco's Hawiyah natural gas liquids (NGL) recovery programme, FMQhas been awarded the SR 70 million ($19 million) contract covering the construction of two pipeline sections. The first section is a new 24-inch-diameter, 57-kilometre-long NGL pipeline running from the planned new Hawiyah NGL plant to the Uthmaniyah gas plant. The second section will link the Uthmaniyah plant with the Shedgum gas plant through a 28-inch, 58-kilometre line. Mechanical completion is scheduled for April 2007.

Invitation to bid documents are expected to be released later in June for another pipeline project under the Hawiyah NGL recovery programme, calling for the construction of three pipeline sections (MEED 1:4:05).

Several other pipeline projects are also out for tender including the debottlenecking of the Shedgum-Yanbu east-west SHY-1 NGL pipeline and the construction of parallel ethane and butane pipelines between the planned integrated Rabigh refinery/petrochemicals plant and the existing Yanbu NGL facility (MEED 6:5:05).