Commercial bids were originally due on 28 September but have been delayed by a month. An award is expected by the end of the year (MEED 7:11:08).

The client, a joint venture of South Korea's Honam Petrochemical Corporation and Qatar Intermediate Holdings Company, a subsidiary of Qatar Petroleum, had previously delayed completing the evaluation of the technical bids which were submitted in early July.

The three competing groups for the estimated $1bn-1.2bn contract are: Germany's Linde with South Korea's Samsung Engineering Company; KBR of the US with GS Engineering & Construction of South Korea; and CBI Lummus Global of the US with Japan's Toyo Engineering Corporation and South Korea's Hyundai Engineering & Construction Company (MEED 26:8:08).

In addition to the 900,000-tonne-a-year (t/y) ethane/naphtha cracker, the complex will produce 600,000 t/y of styrene monomer, 200,000 t/y of polystyrene and 700,000 t/y of polypropylene.

The US' Foster Wheeler is the joint front-end engineering and design, and project management contractor.