Three international companies priced the turnkey contract by the 22 April deadline. Kvaerner's offer is some 45 per cent lower than the next price of KD 339.4 million ($1,127 million) submitted by Paris-based Technip-Coflexip. Japan's JGC Corporationoffered a price of KD 375.2 million ($1,246 million).

The Kuwait Oil Company (KOC) project is being tendered in four major packages. They are:

General works,which include the construction of a north pier for loading of crude oil, a crude oil control centre and related works;

Tanks and gravity lines, which call for the construction of 19 storage tanks with total capacity of 11.4 million barrels. Fifteen tanks are proposed to be built at the north farm and the remaining four at the south farm. The package also calls for the construction of four new crude-filling and gravity manifolds and the supply and installation of five new 48-inch-diameter pipelines;

Pumps and metering skids, which include the construction of a new pump station at the proposed new north pier and the supply and installation of four new 14,500-tonne-an-hour crude oil pumps and metering skids; and

Offshoreworks,which call for the construction of two single point mooring (SPM) calm buoys and upgrading the two existing SPM units, the supply and installation of three new 56-inch-diameter submarine pipelines from the proposed new pumping station to two new SPM calm buoys, the construction of a bunker fuel facility and related works.

The US' Parsons Engineering Corporationhas carried out the front-end engineering and design (FEED) work for the scheme. The project is targeted for completion by the end of 2005, by which time KOC plans to have added 1.5 million barrels a day to its production capacity.