Abu Dhabi Gas Industries (Gasco) has extended the deadline for technical bids for its Habshan acid gas flare tender. The state firm has left the submission date for commercial bids unchanged.

The new deadline for technical submissions is 3 May, delayed from 21 April. The commercial bids will still be submitted on 31 May.

According to sources close to the project, Gasco is looking to tackle all technical clarifications before the bids are submitted. “For a project of this size, they try and clarify everything before the technical submissions,” says a source at a bidding company. “Some of the technical clarification we send them might have indicated that certain evaluation in the ITB [invitation to bid] was not complete.”

The source did not rule out that the bid deadline could be extended further.

Seven contractors are looking to bid:

• Al-Jaber Group (local)
• Alsa Engineering (local)
• Consolidated Contractors Company (CCC) (Athens-based)
• Descon Engineering (Pakistan)
• Dodsal (India)
• Punj Lloyd (India)
• Technip (France)

The engineering, procurement and construction contract is expected to be awarded by the end of June 2011 and work will likely be completed in the first quarter of 2014.

The scope of the project will include developing an acid gas removal unit, injection compressors, pipelines and pig launching and receiving facilities.

Tebodin of the Netherlands won the project management and consultancy deal in December 2010, after Australia’s WorleyParsons had undertaken the front-end engineering and design work (feed).

The project is one of several undertaken at the Habshan gas processing and distribution hub in recent years. Gasco currently produces about 5 billion cubic feet a day (cf/d) of natural gas from associated and non-associated fields. The company plans to lift production to 7 billion cf/d.