Abu Dhabi Polymers Company (Borouge) has held talks with the US’s Fluor and South Korea’s Hyundai Engineering & Construction and both companies are now preparing to submit bids for a $200m petrochemicals facility in the UAE.

Fluor and Hyundai join the UK’s Petrofac and Germany’s Linde on the prequalified shortlist for the engineering, procurement and construction (EPC) contract and will be expected to submit technical bids before the extended deadline of 30 September.

“Fluor and Hyundai are back in and will be submitting bids,” a source tells MEED. “At one point only Petrofac and Linde were left in the running, but four companies will be bidding now.”

The bid deadline for the commercial phase that will follow on from the technical bidding stage will be 25 November.

The scope of work for the contract will see the successful bidder construct a cross-linked polyethylene (XLPE) plant as part of the third-phase expansion of Borouge’s petrochemicals complex at Ruwais in Abu Dhabi.

South Korea’s SK Engineering & Construction and Italy’s Tecnimont were also originally prequalified for the project, but both companies declined to bid (MEED 3:9:10).  

The Borouge 3 capacity expansion will bring the total output at the company’s Ruwais production complex to 4.5 million tonnes a year of plastics, making it one of the largest basic plastics facilities in the world.