State-owned Kuwait National Petroleum Company (KNPC) has awarded Chinese energy company Sinopec a $30m engineering, procurement and construction (EPC) contract to carry out a service job at its Mina al-Ahmadi refinery.

As part of the contract, Sinopec will carry out EPC and commissioning works to replace UNIFLUX heaters at the refinery’s liquefied petroleum gas (LPG) plant trains 1, 2 and 3 with new vertical heaters.

From a list of over 30 pre-qualified bidders, only three firms placed bids for the job. Other than Sinopec, the two others were Kuwait’s Gulf SPIC General Trading and Contracting Company and Egypt’s Enppi.

Kuwait is looking to double refining capacity from the current 936,000 barrels a day (b/d) combined output of the existing Mina al-Ahmadi and Mina Abdullah refineries.

The greenfield Al-Zour Refinery greenfield project, being built by state-owned Kuwait Integrated Petroleum Industries Company (KIPIC), is expected to raise the country’s refining capacity to 1.7 million b/d in 2025 and 2 million b/d by 2035.