Kuwait’s Central Tenders Committee (CTC) has approved a $220m deal with South Korea’s Hanwha Engineering & Construction to upgrade fire-detection and prevention systems at Kuwait’s refineries.

Hanwha emerged as the frontrunner to win the contract after it submitted a price of KD62.1m ($220m) on 15 December, beating a price of KD76.7m from its nearest rival Zurich-based ABB Engineering Technologies by 23.5 per cent.

Five international engineering firms submitted bids for the deal out of 14 prequalified, including:

• Hanwha Engineering & Construction (South Korea) KD62.1
• ABB Engineering Technologies (Switzerland) KD76.7m
• Saipem (Italy) KD93.8m
• Kentz Overseas (Ireland) KD101m
• Techint (Italy) KD115m

The client, Kuwait National Petroleum Corporation (KNPC) wants to renovate its current fire detection, alarm and prevention systems and dispose of its halon gas fire suppressant system across its three refineries at at Mina al-Ahmadi, Mina Abdullah and Shuaiba.

The state-refiner has had several fires at its refineries, the latest of which came as recently as 1 June, when a fire broke out at a hydrogen unit in the 260,000 barrel-a-day Mina Abdullah refinery, forcing it to shut down.

The deal represents Hanwha’s second win in the country after being awarded an $189m contract in September to build a liquefied petroleum gas (LPG) bottling facility for state-owned Kuwait Oil Tanker Company (MEED 31:8:10).