As many as five contractors have asked Kuwait Oil Company (KOC) for an eight-week extension to prepare technical and commercial bids for the deal to build a series of oil and gas pipelines across the country.

Contractors are due to submit bids by 21 March for the estimated $2bn deal, sources close to the project tell MEED. It remains unclear if KOC will grant the full extension.

“We are not ready to submit a bid yet,” says one executive at a bidding firm. “With all the work done preparing for the gas fractioning project at Mina al-Ahmadi, we have not had the manpower to put something together.”

A number of contractors prequalified to bid for the deal recently submitted bids on 2 March for the Kuwait National Petroleum Company (KNPC) deal to build a new gas fractioning column at the Mina al-Ahmadi refinery (MEED 7:3:10).

They include Daelim Corporation; GS Engineering & Construction; SK Engineering & Construction; all of South Korea, and Italy’s Saipem.

KOC plans to construct a series of pipelines from the Mina al-Ahmadi refinery to various power plants across the country. These will include low sulphur fuel oil pipelines.

The Mina al-Ahmadi refinery is approximately 45km south of Kuwait City. The pipelines will provide feedstock to power plants at Doha East and West, Subiya, Shuaiba and Al-Zour.

The deal will be broken down in to two phases. The first phase involves the installation of three 48-inch pipelines, and one 40-inch pipeline. The second phase includes the construction of a pumping station and metering systems.