Kuwait’s Central Agency for Public Tenders (CAPT) has given approval for state-owned upstream operator Kuwait Oil Company (KOC) to award Indian contractor Larsen & Toubro a pipeline deal worth $376m.

“Approval has been given by CAPT, but the contract hasn’t been signed yet,” says an industry source close to the project.

The engineering, procurement and construction (EPC) contract is for a 120-kilometre-long crude transit pipeline running from North Kuwait to the central mixing manifold in Al-Ahmadi in the south. Bids for the deal were submitted on 2 July.

The pipeline, known as Trunk Line 5 (TL5), will have a 48-inch diameter and run in parallel to the existing pipeline, known as Trunk Line 3 (TL3).

TL5 has been designed to have a capacity of 1 million barrels a day (b/d) of oil.

The following companies submitted bids for the deal:

Seventeen international contractors were prequalified to submit proposals for the project.

The scope of work includes:

The crude pipeline scheme is also set to provide interfaces to the Lower Fars heavy oil development as well as the construction of a new strategic gas export pipeline from North Kuwait to Mina al-Ahmadi.

KOC is undertaking an infrastructure upgrade of its crude transportation, storage and export facilities as it seeks to boost production to 4 million b/d by 2020.

The oil company had planned to tender the TL5 pipeline around the same time as Gathering Centre 32, which was awarded earlier this year to the UK’s Petrofac.

The $1.65bn gathering centre is being developed to deal with increasing sourness from the southeastern Burgan field.