The local Osos Petrochemicals Company has invited international contractors to submit bids by the end of July for the main package on its planned polybutylene terephthalate (PBT) complex in Yanbu, on the Red Sea coast.

Three South Korean firms ? GS Engineering & Construction, Hanwha Engineering & Construction and Samsung Engineering Company ? are understood to be competing for the estimated $500 million lump-sum turnkey contract.

The work comprises four main elements, which include a 60,000-tonne-a-year PBT plant, butanediol and maleic anhydride units to feed the PBT facility, and the complex?s offsites and utilities. Butane feedstock for the butanediol unit will be supplied by Saudi Aramco.

The US? Foster Wheeler is the front-end engineering and design and project management consultant on the scheme.

It will carry out the basic design of the complex?s offsites and utilities element as well as providing project management services, including the preparation of a project cost estimate and tender documents and the technical evalution of engineering, procurement and construc- tion bids.