Companies have entered unpriced commercial bids for the five main packages of the onshore section of Abu Dhabi’s Integrated Gas Development (IGD), in the first stage of a three-part process.

The bids were submitted to Abu Dhabi Gas Industries Company (Gasco) on 28 January.

“Normally, Gasco asks for unpriced commercial bids and technical bids at the same time,” says a source at one of the bidding contractors. “This time, it has asked for the unpriced commercial bids first. Once it has assessed those, it will ask for final commercial bids.”

Technical bids are due by 1 March, followed by final commercial bids. Contractors expect awards to be made in August.

More than 15 firms are bidding for the packages on the IGD. In addition, several local firms are bidding for smaller packages.

Among the bidders for package one, covering the Habshan 5 gas processing plant, are a consortium of the US’ Fluor Corporation and Athens-based Consolidated Contractors International Company (CCC), Paris-based Technip, and a group of Japan’s JGC Corporation and Italy’s Technimont and Snamprogetti.

Bidders for package two, covering offsites and utilities, include the Fluor/CCC consortium, Technimont, the UK’s Petrofac, and Technip Abu Dhabi, a local subsidiary of the French company.

Package three, covering a fourth natural gas liquids (NGL) recovery train at Ruwais, is being contested by Snamprogetti, Fluor, JGC and Spain’s TR. The fourth package, covering liquefied petroleum gas storage tanks at Ruwais, has attracted bids from the US’ CBI Lummus, India’s Punj Lloyd, South Korea’s Samsung and Daewoo.

A fifth package, which has been tendered by Abu Dhabi Gas Liquefaction Company rather than Gasco, covers the construction of process units and utilities on Das island, including a gas dehydration and compression facility.

It has attracted bids from Technip, the UK’s Petrofac, South Korea’s Hyundai Heavy Industries, Abu Dhabi’s National Petroleum Construction Company, and Italy’s Saipem.

Gasco is also believed to be tendering two or three civil works contracts among local contractors, covering early works and non-process buildings at Habshan, and early works at Ruwais.

The front-end engineering and design (FEED) contractor on the IGD is Fluor. The US’ KBR is the project management consultant for the FEED phase (MEED 4:5:07).

The multi-billion-dollar IGD project covers the production and transfer of more than 700 million cubic feet a day (cf/d) of high-pressure gas from the offshore Umm Shaif and Khuff reservoirs to new onshore processing facilities at Habshan and Ruwais, via Das island.

The offshore portion of the IGD, which is being handled by Abu Dhabi Marine Operating Company, is yet to be tendered. It covers the installation of a platform to be built adjacent to the Umm Shaif complex, and an associated gas transfer pipeline to Das island.

Abu Dhabi Company for Onshore Operations (Adco), which along with Gasco is a subsidiary of the state-owned Abu Dhabi National Oil Company (Adnoc), recently awarded $3.5bn worth of oil and gas engineering, procurement and construction contracts, the first in the region for three months.

The company said at the time that it had “no intention of postponing any of its strategic works” despite the ongoing global economic turmoil.

TABLE: Estimated value of integrated gas development contracts