Kuwait’s Ministry of Electricity and Water (MEW) has invited prequalified contractors to submit bids for the contract to supply and install high tension overhead electricity lines in different areas of Kuwait.

The prequalified contractors have until 15 December to submit bids for the contract. The 13 prequalifiers are:

• Hyundai E&C (South Korea)/United Gulf Construction Company (local)
• National Contracting Company (NCC) (Saudi Arabia)/National Contracting Company (local)
• SA-RA Energy Construction Trade Industry Company (Turkey)/Aslaa General Trading & Contracting Company  (local)
• Kalpataru Power Transmission (India)/Thuwainy Trading Company (local)
• KEC International (India)/Behman General Trading and Contracting Company (local)
• Elsewedy Electric Unitech (Egypt/India)/Elsewedy Electric (local)
• National Power Construction Corporation (Pakistan)/Granada Petroleum Equipment & Supplies (local)
• Instalaciones Inabensa (Spain)/Al-Mulla Building & Construction Company (local)
• Larsen & Toubro (India)/Larsen & Toubro Kuwait Construction General Contracting Company (local)
• Isolux Ingerieria (Spain)/Combined Group Contracting Company (local)
• Jioty Structures (India)/Abdulatif Ali Al-Jassar &Sons General Trading & Contracting
• Mitas Energy & Metal Construction (Turkey)/Al-Dar Engineering Trading & Contracting Company (local)
• Power Grid Corporation (India)/Real Estate Construction & Fabrication Company (local)

The overhead line project is part of Kuwait’s efforts to upgrade its power sector. In addition to increasing generation capacity by 16,000MW in the next 10 years, Kuwait is planning to invest heavily in upgrading and expanding its transmission and distribution (T&D) infrastructure.

In August, Kuwait’s Central Tenders Committee (CTC) received bids for two contracts to build a number of electrical substations in the Jaber al-Ahmad area.

For the first contract, the CTC received bids from five companies for the contract to build seven substations at Jaber al-Ahmad, including the Y5, Y6, Y7, Y8, Y9, Y10, Y11 substations. Saudi Arabia’s National Contracting Company (NCC) submitted the lowest price of KD23.1m ($81.2m). This was marginally lower than the KD23.14m bid submitted by the local Al-Ahlia. The local office of India’s Larsen & Toubro submitted the third lowest price of KD24.3m.

Four companies submitted prices for the second contract, which also involves building seven substations. These are the 1X, 2X, 3X, 4X, 5X, 6X and 7X substations. The local office of India’s Larsen & Toubro submitted the low bid of KD22.9m, which was 1.3 per cent lower than the KD23.2m price submitted by the local Al-Ahlia. Kharafi National and Switzerland’s ABB completed the bidding with prices of KD23.8m and KD30m respectively.