The Egyptian consortium is made up of Petrojet, Engineering for the Petroleum & Process Industries (Enppi), the Egyptian Natural Gas Holding Companyand the Egyptian General Petroleum Corporation. It bid for the estimated $200 million-250 million build-operate-transfer (BOT) contract in competition with Athens-based Consolidated Contractors International Company (CCC)and a team of Sharjah-based Petrofac Internationaland the European ABB.

Project sources say the Jordanian Energy & Mineral Resources Ministry ranked the Egyptian team first following the technical and commercial evaluation, with CCC in second spot and Petrofac/ABB in third.

The gas is to be supplied to Jordan by Egypt's Al-Sharq Gas Company. Petrojet and Enppi are working for Al-Sharq on the construction of a pipeline to bring the gas across Sinai to Taba, on the Gulf of Aqaba. Several international companies were invited to bid for the subsea section from Taba to Aqaba. However, it is understood that the only international firm to submit a bid was the Swiss-based Allseas group. Al-Sharq is aiming to complete the subsea section in March 2003. Contractors describe this as an extremely tight schedule.

Supplies to Jordan are to start at 1,100 million cubic metres a year (cm/y) in 2003, rising to 3,500 million cm/y after 10 years. There are also plans to extend the pipeline to Syria, Lebanon, Cyprus and Turkey.