Commentary
Wil Crisp
Oil & gas reporter

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Kuwait’s planned onshore gas plant for the Dorra field – expected to be worth more than KD1bn ($3.3bn) – will become the country’s biggest oil and gas sector contract award in more than a decade if it goes ahead as planned.

The contract was tendered by state-owned Kuwait Gulf Oil Company (KGOC) on 23 August, with a bid deadline of 29 December 2026, and a meeting for contractors is scheduled for 14 September.

The last time that a contract for a hydrocarbons project of this size was awarded in Kuwait was in July 2015, when the main contracts were awarded for Kuwait’s Al-Zour refinery project.

Kuwait’s Al-Zour refinery is one of the largest of its kind in the Middle East and North Africa region. It mainly produces gasoline, diesel and kerosene to Euro 5 emission standards.

The project comprised five main engineering, procurement and construction (EPC) packages. The EPC contracts were awarded during the second half of 2015.

The largest of these was the process plant package, known as Package 1, valued at $4.1bn.

This was awarded to a joint venture of Spain’s Tecnicas Reunidas, with South Korea's Hanwha Engineering & Construction and China's Sinopec.

In the past eight years, no contract in Kuwait’s oil and gas sector has exceeded $1bn.

The last time that a contract worth more than $1bn was awarded was in March 2017, when the state-owned upstream operator Kuwait Oil Company (KOC) awarded a $1.3bn contract to UK-based Petrofac.

The contract focused on developing the facility known as Gathering Centre 32, located in southeastern Kuwait in the Burgan Field.

Petrofac completed work on this facility in 2022.

In recent years, contract awards in Kuwait’s oil and gas sector have been very low due to a range of problems, including several years of political gridlock and infighting between the cabinet and parliament.

In May last year, Kuwait’s emir indefinitely dissolved parliament and suspended some of the country’s constitutional articles in an effort to end this political gridlock.