State refiner Kuwait National Petroleum Company (KNPC) has invited engineering, procurement and construction (EPC) contractors to prequalify for the delayed contract for a fifth gas processing train at the Mina al-Ahmadi refinery.

Prequalification documents will be available from KNPC from 11 November and are due for submission by 8 January 2013.

The estimated $900m was expected to be launched in early 2012, but the process has been pushed back along with Kuwait’s other major downstream schemes; the $16bn Clean Fuels Project, the $15bn New Refinery Project and the $700m new sulphur handling facility. KNPC now says it plans to launch tenders in February 2013.

The new train will increase Kuwait’s gas production capacity to 805 million cubic feet a day (cf/d) and 106,000 barrels a day (b/d) of liquids. It is aimed at meeting the increasing upstream production capacity from state-owned Kuwait Oil Company (KOC) and Kuwait Gulf Oil Company (KGOC).

The new facility will include:

• Pre-treatment unit
• Natural gas liquid (NGL) recovery unit
• Fractionation column
• Product treatment unit
• Propane refrigeration unit
• Deep refrigeration unit
• Sour water stripper
• De-mineralised water plant
• Fuel gas treatment unit
• Utilities
• Tie-ins with existing facilities to increase the gas treating capacity.

The UK’s Amec was appointed in April 2011 to carry out the scheme’s front-end engineering and design (feed) and its project management consultancy (PMC).

The fourth gas train is currently still under construction by South Korea’s Daelim under a $886m awarded in June 2010. Due for completion before the end of 2013, the plant will processes more than 800 million cf/d of gas and 100,000 b/d of condensates.