South Korea’s GS Engineering & Construction has emerged as the frontrunner to win a $550m deal to design and build a new liquefied petroleum gas (LPG) tank farm at the Mina al-Ahmadi refinery in southern Kuwait after submitting the lowest bid.

GS’s price of KD154m ($549m) beat rival proposals from at least eight international engineering and construction firms in a 30 January bid round dominated by contractors from South Korea, according to sources close to the scheme.

At least 11 contractors submitted bids, including seven South Korean firms, including:

• GS Engineering & Construction
• Samsung C&T Corporation (South Korea) KD157m
• Samsung Engineering (South Korea) KD161m
• Daelim (South Korea) KD179m
• Sinopec (China) KD199m
• Hanwha (South Korea) and Oyster Progetti (Italy) KD211m
• Petrofac (UK) KD215m
• Hyundai (South Korea) KD217m
• Saipem (Italy) KD237m
• HHI (South Korea) KD253m
• Daewoo (South Korea) KD288m

State-refiner Kuwait National Petroleum Company (KNPC) prequalified nine firms for the deal in August, before adding another three in October. Front-end engineering and design (feed) work for the LPG tank deal was carried out by the UK’s Amec.

The winning firm will demolish the existing LPG tank farm in the northern area of the refinery and replace it with a larger capacity tank farm, which will be integrated with the existing south area tank farm, as well as revamping the refinery’s LPG export lines.

The facility will store LPG from KNPC’s fourth gas fractionating column, which is expected to be completed by the end of 2013. The facility will separate associated gas produced in the north and southeast of the country into its basic components. (MEED 15:6:10).

GS’ last contract award worth almost $4bn came in 2009 for the planned fourth refinery at Al-Zour. The scheme was cancelled later and the decision to restart the project is now with the Supreme Petroleum Council.