Bids for the marine package of Kuwait National Petroleum Company’s (KNPC’s) $14bn Al-Zour New Refinery Project were submitted to the Central Tenders Committee (CTC) on 6 January.

The prequalified companies are:

• Petrofac (UK) / Hyundai Heavy Industries (HHI, South Korea)
• Saipem (Italy) / Essar (India) / Hyundai Engineering & Construction (South Korea)
• Daelim Industrial (South Korea)
• Daewoo Engineering & Construction (South Korea)
• McDermott International (US)

The estimated budget for the package is $850m.

Packages 1, 2 and 3 all saw their bid deadlines extended to 10 February on 24 December last year.

The delay announced in December is the second in four months. KNPC decided to pushed back the deadlines for bids for the first three packages in September, after prequalified companies asked for more time.

The tankage package, known as package 4, is currently under evaluation.

Bids were submitted for the tankage package on 7 December, with Saipem the low bidder in consortium with Essar, with a bid of $1.72bn.

• Saipem / Essar ($1.72bn)
• Daelim Industrial ($1.97bn)
• Daewoo ($2.13bn)
• Petrofac / HHI ($2.35bn)

Contract awards for all five packages are scheduled for early May. It is not yet clear whether KNPC will award all five contracts simultaneously or separately.

The packages are expected to be worth a total of $11.5bn.

The Al-Zour new refinery is key to Kuwait’s hopes of meeting growing power demand. The 615,000 barrel-a-day (b/d) facility will supply 225,000 b/d of low-sulphur fuel oil for power generation. The scheme will be one of the largest single-phase refineries ever built.

The project has been tendered twice before, only to be awarded and cancelled before construction could begin.