Fluor will carry out work on the initial phase at its Houston office. 'The contract authorises Fluor to proceed with a portion of the work, with the balance of the project, which has an estimated value of more than $1,000 million, to be released early next year,' the company said.

Fluor's contract is understood to cover the vapour recovery, storage tanks, onshore pipelines and accommodation elements of the project but not substations or offshore pipelines. For the storage tank package, which Fluor will place as an engineering, procurement and construction (EPC) subcontract, three companies have been invited to submit bids by 8 December. They are the US' Chicago Bridge & Iron, Japan's TKKand the UK's Whessoe.

The subcontract covers seven field condensate tanks, five plant condensate tanks and two liquefied petroleum gas (LPG) tanks, with capacities of 35,000-90,000 cubic metres. The front-end engineering and design (FEED) contractor on the offplots project is Italy's Snamprogettiwith WorleyParsonsof Australia.

The RasGas offplots is the second major oil and gas award, after the Pearl GTL scheme, to be made on an EPCM and negotiated basis in recent months. As on Pearl GTL, the client on the offplots project had looked at tendering the work on an EPC basis, but opted for the EPCM approach to reduce contractor risk, increase competition and speed up project execution.