State-owned Abu Dhabi Oil Refining Company (Takreer) has again put back the deadline for commercial bids for the third-phase expansion of the power and water plant that serves its refinery complex at Ruwais on the Gulf coast.

France’s Alstom with Switzerland-based ABB, Germany’s Siemens and South Korea’s Samsung Corporation, and a consortium of the US’ GE with South Korea’s Hyundai Heavy Industries, submitted technical bids for the scheme at the end of September.

But Takreer has now postponed the deadline for commercial bids from 29 October until 14 December, leading contractors to believe it could cancel the project.

The refiner has already delayed the deadline for technical bids several times since the original date of November 2008.

Germany’s Fichtner is Takreer’s technical consultant on the simple-cycle power plant scheme.

The third phase of the expansion project will add 750MW of power-generating capacity to the existing Ruwais power plant, which already has seven gas and two steam turbines, with a total capacity of more than 650MW. The plant is connected to the Adwea grid via a 220kV underground cable.

Takreer’s water plant at Ruwais has a capacity of 13.2 million gallons a day of desalinated water.

Meanwhile, Adwea’s Shuweihat 2 independent water and power project passed a milestone on 15 October when its developers raised the $2.2bn of debt needed to build the scheme.

Belgium’s Suez Energy International and Japan’s Marubeni Corporation are jointly developing Shuweihat 2 with Adwea as a minority shareholder.

The partners have signed up 15 lenders to finance the $2.2bn debt, with Japan Bank for International Co-operation providing $1.1bn (see Agenda).