Kuwait’s Central Tenders Committee (CTC) has approved the award of a KD154m ($550m) contract to South Korea’s GS Engineering & Construction to design and build a new liquefied petroleum gas (LPG) tank farm at the Mina al-Ahmadi refinery in southern Kuwait.

GS submitted the lowest price in a 30 January bid round dominated by South Korean engineering and construction firms. Of the 11 bidders, seven came from South Korea. The price of second-placed bidder, Samsung C&T Corporation also of South Korea, was only marginally higher price at KD157m.

The client, state-refiner Kuwait National Petroleum Company (KNPC) prequalified nine firms for the deal in August last year, before adding another three in October (MEED 4:2:11).

GS will now demolish the existing LPG tank farm in the northern area of the Mina al-Ahmadi refinery and replace it with a larger capacity tank farm, which will be integrated with the existing south area tank farm. It will also revamp the refinery’s LPG export lines.

The tank farm is intended to store LPG from KNPC’s fourth gas fractionating column, which breaks down the associated natural gas produced in the north and southeast of the country into its basic components. The column is expected to be completed by the end of 2013.

The front-end engineering and design (feed) was carried out by the UK’s Amec.

The contract is GS’ third and largest engineering, procurement and construction (EPC) contract in Kuwait having completed a $138m revamp of the atmospheric residue desulphurisation unit at the Mina Abdullah refinery and a $125m new gas oil desulphurisation unit at the Mina al-Ahmadi refinery in 2002.