Kuwait is retendering the contract to construct feed pipelines for its estimated $17bn New Refinery Project (NRP) and has invited seven companies to submit bids, according to sources.

The firms that had submitted the first, second and third lowest bids on the project have been excluded from the list of companies pre-qualified for the new tender. The deadline for submitting bids is 18 June.

MEED reported that the project will be retendered after it had been been cancelled by Kuwait’s Supreme Petroleum Council, which began probing allegations of corruption among contractors.

Firms pre-qualified to participate in the engineering procurement and construction contract for the final phase of the project to provide crude feed-stock and fuel gas from Kuwait Oil Company’s (KOC) South Tank Farm facilities in Ahmadi to the NRP are:

• Daelim (South Korea)
• JGC (Japan)
• KBR (US)
• SK Engineering (South Korea)
• Saipem (Italy)
• SNC Lavalin (Canada)
• Tecnicas Reunidas (Spain)

State upstream operator Kuwait Oil Company had submitted a request to retender the project after the Central Agency for Public Tenders chose Dodsal Group as the lowest bidder on the project in January.

The Kuwaiti parliament was opposed to the award of the project to the UAE-based group, which had submitted a bid of $868m, accusing it of delaying work it had previously undertaken in the country.

The project was first tendered in 2014 and Indian engineering and construction firm Larsen & Toubro had submitted the lowest bid of $753m. The firm excused itself from the tender citing failure of its local partner Joint Scientific Group to extend bank guarantee.

Dodsal and UK firm Petrofac were thereby left in the running for the project. The latter has also not been invited to bid on the project.

Larsen & Toubro is likely to contest its exclusion from the list of pre-qualified bidders, according to sources with knowledge of the matter.