Bidders prepare for Hadramout EPC job

26 September 2003
Bids are due to be returned in early October for the engineering, procurement and construction (EPC) contract to build a greenfield refinery for Hadramout Refineries Company (HRC), owners of Yemen's first privately-owned refinery project. In mid-August, HRC signed a $1,200 million long-term offtake agreement with South Korea's Samsung Corporation for the refinery's output (MEED 22:8:03).

The estimated $200 million EPC contract, which is scheduled to be awarded in January 2004, calls for the construction of a 50,000-barrel-a-day (b/d) refinery, though capacity may be doubled to 100,000 b/d during the course of the project's 50-year lifespan. The construction period is 24 months. The refinery will be located near Mukalla on the Arabian Sea coast.

Under the terms of the offtake agreement, Samsung will lift a total of 8.8 million tonnes over a 10-year period from the plant. HRC also plans to award an operation and maintenance contract for the project, on which Technip is acting as the project management contractor.

The investors in the project - a group of businessmen from Saudi Arabia and the UAE - have yet to reach a conclusion on the financing structure of the project.

Two further refinery projects are proposed in Yemen. A 30,000-b/d refinery is planned at Ras Issa on the Red Sea. The US-based VECO has worked on the feasibility study for the estimated $200 million plant, which is also expected to be financed by private investors. The government also plans to revamp and expand the 50-year-old refinery at Aden, boosting production there to 225,000 b/d from the present capacity of 170,000 b/d (MEED 4:10:02).

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