Kuwait’s Central Tenders Committee (CTC) has approved the prequalification of six international dredging firms to bid for preparatory works for the planned New Refinery Project (NRP) at Al-Zour in the south of the country.

State-refiner Kuwait National Petroleum Company (KNPC) had set a deadline of 5 March for companies to submit their prequalification documents.

The six approved dredging firms are:

• Boskalis Westminster (Netherlands)
• China Harbour Engineering Company (China)
• Van Oord Dredging & Marine Contractors (Netherlands)
• Penta Ocean Construction Company (Japan)
• Dredging International (Belgium)
• Jan De Nul (Belgium)

KNPC plans to build a 615,000-barrel-a-day (b/d) refinery on sites to the west and north of the existing Al-Zour power station, covering between 13 and 14 square kilometres. It will produce low sulphur fuel oil to replace the high sulphur fuel used in Kuwait’s power plants.

The scope will cover offshore dredging work and the backfilling of about 60 million cubic metres. However, due to weak ground conditions at the site, it will be necessary to remediate the soil using large quantities of fill and to raise the rough grade above the water table. The project will level and reinforce the site to prevent the invasion of seawater.

KNPC is yet to announce the prequalified groups that will bid for NRP’s main packages. In mid-March KNPC announced that seven groups would be eligible to bid for the clean fuels project, another major downstream project worth approximately $16bn.