Kuwait Oil Company (KOC) has invited international firms to prequalify for a deal to provide engineering services for oil and gas projects by 7 November.

The winning firm will provide in-house front-end engineering and design (Feed) services for KOC. Interested firms can collect prequalification documents from KOC’s offices in Ahmadi after 19 September.

In late 2007 and early 2008, KOC signed three deals with engineering firms to provide the state upstream operator with feed and project management consultancy services. The UK’s Amec signed a five-year in-house management contract with KOC in a deal worth an estimated $300m renewing its existing contract which started in 2004 (MEED 13:1:10).

Australia’s WorleyParsons and the US’s Fluor won the other two deals. KOC previously kept only two in-house management contractors, but in 2007 took on three firms as it seeks to increase production capacity to 4 million barrels a day (b/d) by 2020, from the current 3 million b/d. This will include about 250,000 b/d from Kuwait’s technically heavy oil reserves. The country will also need to revamp its distribution network to deal with the 1 million b/d increase in production.