Kuwait’s Kharafi National has won a $700m-plus deal to complete the main construction work on the Abu Dhabi Gas Industries (Gasco) gas processing facilities at Habshan, in the north of Abu Dhabi emirate.

Sources close to the scheme say Kharafi was awarded the deal to perform all of the civil, mechanical and electrical construction at the plant in early January.

The firm will act as subcontractor to Italy’s Tecnimont, which won the $4.7bn engineering, procurement and construction deal to build the gas processing facilities in a consortium with Japan’s JGC in July 2009 (MEED 16:7:09).

Tecnimont and JGC split the project into two parts and each firm is overseeing its own portion of the project, says a senior executive working on the scheme. Tecnimont is primarily working on the main plant, while JGC is developing the associated facilities.

Athens-based Consolidated Contractors International Company (CCC) has been selected as the construction subcontractor for JGC on its part of the project in a deal worth around $300m, the executive adds.

The gas plant is one of the biggest single deals ever awarded in the UAE. It covers facilities to process 12,000 tonnes a day of natural gas liquids, 7,000 tonnes a day of sulphur and 2 billion cubic feet a day (cf/d) of natural gas.

The plant is due for completion by the end of the third quarter of 2013, and sources close to the scheme say that contractors will start mobilising in the second quarter of 2010.

The deal is part of the emirate’s wider $10bn integrated gas development. That project covers the production and transfer of more than 700 million cubic feet a day of high-pressure gas from the offshore Umm Shaif and Khuff reservoirs to new onshore processing facilities at Habshan and Ruwais, via Das island.