Contractors have been asked to submit revised bids on a project to upgrade Abu Dhabi’s Ruwais refining operations to handle additional offshore crude.

Project owner, state-owned Abu Dhabi Oil Refining Company (Takreer), received the initial commercial engineering, procurement and construction (EPC) bids on the project at the end of 2015 but now companies have been asked to submit revised prices in mid-December. 

Before the request to revise prices, South Korea’s GS Engineering & Construction had submitted the lowest commercial bid out of the three firms vying for the tender, according to sources familiar with the project. The other two firms bidding for the deal are South Korea’s Samsung Engineering and Spain-based Tecnicas Reunidas.

All three firms will now submit new commercial bids.

Takreer is planning to upgrade existing units at the Ruwais refinery site in the far west of Abu Dhabi. The work will include modifying existing units in order to process 420,000 barrels a day (b/d) of offshore crude.

The work will include upgrades on units completed in the Ruwais refinery expansion project, which was commissioned in 2015 and which doubled the existing capacity of the site to more than 800,000 b/d.