Estimated to be worth $500 million, the engineering, procurement and construction (EPC) contract includes the installation of central and satellite production facilities, an oil tank farm and associated works. The project calls for the use of thermal injection techniques to raise production to 150,000 barrels a day (b/d) by 2011 from 10,000 b/d. Calgary-based MEG Worley, wholly-owned by Australia's WorleyParsons, has carried out the front-end engineering and design (FEED) contract. A consortium of the US' Occidental Petroleum Corporation and Abu Dhabi government-owned Liwa Petroleum is the client.

Revised commercial bids were submitted to Petroleum Development Oman (PDO) for the Qarn Alam EPC contract, following changes in the scope of works. The bidders are a team of Italy's Saipem with Canada's SNC Lavalin; and Spain's Tecnicas Reunidas. The repricing was called after original bids came in almost double PDO's $800 million-900 million budget. The revised scope of works includes all elements in the original tender, except the offplot pipelines and associated works (MEED 14:7:06).