Saudi Aramco is committed to moving ahead with its planned petroleum coke-fired power plant at the oil company’s Total Refining and Petrochemical Company (Satorp) refinery complex in Jubail Industrial City.

According to sources close to the scheme, the client is targeting to issue request for qualification (RFQ) before the end of the year and is planning to issue tender documents by April 2018.

MEED reported in June that Aramco was working on preparing the prequalification list for the proposed petcoke-fired power plant.

In March, Aramco invited developers to submit requests for information (RFI) for the petcoke power project, which will have a power generation capacity of at least 900MW at steam capacity of at least 450 tonnes an hour.

According to sources close to the scheme, the project owner has asked interested parties for more structured information and is currently working on preparing tender documents and project agreements. Aramco is planning to issue the request for proposals by the end of October.

The oil giant has appointed the US’ Jacobs Engineering as technical adviser for the scheme.

The project owner is planning to develop the scheme as an independent power project (IPP) under a build-own-operate-transfer (BOOT) structure. Aramco had been hoping to launch the tender to the market in 2017, however, documents are more likley to be issued in early 2018, according to a source close to the scheme.

Aramco is planning to hold an equity stake in the project company formed to develop the plant. The project company will enter into long-term agreements with Satorp and Sadara for electricity, and Satorp for steam.