Estimated to be worth $15 million-20 million, the engineering, procurement and construction (EPC) contract includes the supply and installation of a booster compressor unit at Habshan in Abu Dhabi emirate and modifications to the gathering units at Maqta and the Jebel Ali gas receiving station. Construction will take 14-16 months. Companies are expected to return technical bids for the contract by late October.

Tebodin Middle East, part of Tebodin of the Netherlands, has carried out the front-end engineering and design (FEED) work for the project.

The project forms part of Gasco's second-phase programme to increase gas supplies to Dubai to 800 million cubic feet a day (cf/d) from 550 million cf/d.

Under the first-phase programme, 550 million cf/d of gas has been supplied to Dubai since mid 2001. A partnership of the local National Petroleum Construction Company and Athens-based Consolidated Contractors International Company (CCC) was awarded in early 2000 an estimated $85 million EPC contract for the first-phase of the Abu Dhabi-Jebel Ali pipeline. The contract involved laying a 130-kilometre, 48-inch pipeline from Maqta to Jebel Ali via Taweelah (MEED 14:1:00).

Additional natural gas to be supplied by the pipeline will be used mainly by Dubai Electricity & Water Authority (DEWA) for power generation at its units in Jebel Ali.

The Dubai government plans an expansion in capacity to fuel its massive infrastructure development programme. Bids are due to be returned by 15 October for the first-phase contract of a greenfield project - the Jebel Alistation, which will have a capacity of 650-700 MW and 70 million gallons a day. The client is DEWA. The consultant is Germany's Lahmeyer International(MEED 2:8:02; 31:5:02).