Al-Khafji Joint Operations (KJO) has allowed engineering firms additional time to prepare fresh proposals for a revised tender for project management consultancy (PMC) services on the multibillion-dollar Dorra gas field facilities development project.

MEED has been reporting since last March on KJO’s efforts to advance a project to produce gas from the Dorra offshore field, located in Gulf waters in the Neutral Zone shared by Saudi Arabia and Kuwait.

KJO, which is jointly owned by Aramco subsidiary Aramco Gulf Operations Company and KPC subsidiary Kuwait Gulf Oil Company, divided the engineering, procurement and construction (EPC) scope of work for the Dorra field gas production project into four EPC packages – three offshore and one onshore. It recently awarded contracts for all the EPC packages, worth a total of close to $7bn.

The tender’s broad scope involves providing PMC services for the EPC works for the Dorra gas facilities development project.

KJO issued the original tender for PMC services on 29 September last year, and engineering firms submitted bids on 19 January this year, MEED previously reported.

In the months following bid submission, KJO held discussions with bidders on contract terms and pricing, sources said. The client ultimately decided to retender the PMC services contract with a revised scope of work, MEED reported in late July.

“The regional conflict in the first and second quarters, and Iran’s hostilities against Gulf states, made the future of the [Dorra gas] project uncertain,” a source earlier told MEED.

“[For KJO], developing a gas field that lies in disputed waters with Iran seemed risky business at the time, and that explains the large part of the delay [in the PMC tendering process],” the source added.

KJO had set an initial bid submission deadline of 17 August for the revised PMC tender for the Dorra gas facilities development project, it was previously reported.

The client has now extended the deadline for submission of proposals by three weeks until 7 September, as per sources.

The following firms, among others, are understood to have been invited by KJO to bid for the revised PMC tender:

• Fluor (US)
• KBR (US)
• Technip Energies (France)
• Wood (UK)
• Worley (Australia)

Apart from these bidders, firms that submitted proposals in the first tender round on 19 January included Saudi Arabia/UAE-based Kent and Spain’s Tecnicas Reunidas.

Saudi Arabia and Kuwait have been pressing ahead with their plan to jointly produce 1 billion cubic feet a day of gas from the Dorra gas field.

The two countries have been producing oil from the Neutral Zone – primarily from the onshore Wafra field and the offshore Khafji field – since at least the 1950s. With a growing need to increase natural gas production, they have been working to exploit the Dorra offshore field, understood to be the only gas field in the Neutral Zone.

Discovered in 1965, the Dorra gas field is estimated to hold 20 trillion cubic metres of gas and 310 million barrels of oil.

The Dorra facilities scheme is one of three multibillion-dollar projects launched by subsidiaries of Aramco and KPC to produce and process gas from the Dorra field that have advanced in the past few months.