Dubai-based engineering company Dodsal has started engineering work on a Kuwait Oil Company (KOC) project to construct an effluent water treatment and injection plant in North Kuwait.

“Dodsal is one month into the project and engineering has begun,” said an industry source.

The contract for the project was awarded to Dodsal on 15 September.

Bids for the project were submitted in February, but came in hundreds of millions of dollars above the scheme’s original budget of $300m.

This caused delays as KOC arranged to increase the project’s budget to $1bn.

The budget increase was approved in July.

Dodsal Group originally submitted the lowest bid for the project with a price of $946m.

The other bidders were:

• Petrofac (UK) – $1,118m
• Saipem (Italy) – $1,179m
• Daelim Industrial (South Korea) – $1,452m
• Hyundai Engineering & Construction (South Korea) – $1,509m

The planned facility is to be located between the Sabriyah and Raudatain fields. It will consist of an effluent water treatment plant with a capacity of 950,000 barrels of water a day (b/d) and an injection facility with a capacity of 500 b/d. It will also include a network of balance tanks that will receive effluent water from various gathering centres.

On 19 October, KOC issued a tender for a project to construct another water treatment centre in North Kuwait, with a bid deadline of 11 January 2015.

Details of the scope of the scheme have yet to be published.

An industry source has told MEED that Dodsal will not be bidding on the newly tendered project.