State-refiner Kuwait National Petroleum Company (KNPC) has invited international and local engineering firms to bid on a deal to design and build a new liquefied petroleum gas (LPG) tank farm at its Mina al-Ahmadi refinery in southern Kuwait.

Contractors preparing to bid on the deal say it could be worth as much as $1.2bn.

The closing date for technical and commercial bids has been set for 28 November this year. KNPC will hold a pre-tender meeting on 22 September. Firms have been invited to submit prequalification documents by 14 August.

Prequalified contractors for the deal include:

• Daelim Industrial (South Korea)
• Daewoo Engineering & Construction (South Korea)
• GS Engineering & Construction (South Korea)
• Hyundai Engineering & Construction (South Korea)
• Hyundai Heavy Industries (South Korea)
• Petrofac International (UK)
• Saipem (Italy)
• Sinopec Engineering (China)
• SK Engineering & Construction (South Korea)

The winning firm will build a new tank farm in the north area of the Mina al-Ahmadi refinery to store LPG from KNPC’s fourth gas train.

“They need the tank farm to store LPG from the fourth train. KNPC is also considering a fifth train”, says a source close to the project.

In June KNPC awarded South Korea’s Daelim the $886m contract for the retendered deal to build a fourth gas fractionating column at the Mina al-Ahmadi refinery. The unit which is expected to be completed by the end of 2013 will separate associated gas produced in the north and southeast of the country into its basic components. (MEED 15:6:10).

A fifth train is under consideration, but a tender is not expected to be released before the end of 2011.

Front-end engineering and design (Feed) work for the LPG tank deal was completed this year by the UK’s Amec.