UAE-based engineering firm Dodsal has submitted the lowest bid for a second successive pipeline construction contract in the emirate, according to contractors bidding on the deal.

Senior executives close to the deal say the company’s price of about $60m for the deal to build a 45-kilometre, 48-inch-diameter nitrogen pipeline linking Mirfa, west of Abu Dhabi, with the Habshan oil field to the south of the capital was the lowest price entered in a 16 November bid round.

The client on the project is a German/UAE joint venture of Linde and Abu Dhabi National Oil Company (Adnoc), called Adnoc Linde Industrial Gases (Elixier).

On 19 November, contractors told MEED that Dodsal had also submitted the lowest bid to build another pipeline for Abu Dhabi Gas Industries Company (Gasco) in a 15 November bid round. Both bids are believed to have been about 10-20 per cent lower than the nearest competitors.

“It looks like they really wanted to get these deals.” says the business development manager of one firm bidding on the Gasco pipeline. “They are already well mobilised in the UAE and they can get some good cost savings by doing both deals at once.”

The Elixier pipeline will carry nitrogen produced at the company’s production facilities at Mirfa to Habshan. Adnoc will then inject it into the oil field to maintain reservoir pressure. The nitrogen will replace the natural gas that Adnoc now uses to maintain pressure.

The Gasco pipeline will replace the existing 36-inch link that carries ethane and methane-rich lean gas between Gasco’s Thamma C production facilities in the northeast with the state-owned enterprise’s Asab facilities in the southwest.