The Laffan Refinery Company has awarded South Korea’s Samsung Engineering the contract to construct a diesel hydrotreater at its refinery complex at Ras Laffan in Qatar.

A letter of award (LoA) has been sent to Samsung by the Qatar Petroleum (QP)-led joint venture. The contractor was the lowest bidder for the engineering, procurement and construction (EPC) contract with a price of around $100m.

CB&I Lummus (Netherlands), GS Engineering & Construction (South Korea) and Saipem (Italy) had also submitted commercial bids.

Spain’s Tecnicas Reunidas completed the front-end engineering and design (feed) work in July.

Once completed, the diesel hydrotreater will reduce will reduce the sulphur content at the Laffan refinery. The refinery became Qatar’s first condensate refinery when it started operations at the end of 2009.

Laffan Refinery Company is a joint venture between 51 per cent shareholder QP, ExxonMobil (US), Total (France), Cosmo (Japan), Idemitsu Kosan (Japan), Marubeni (Japan), Mitsui (Japan).

The partners are also planning a phase II for the refinery, with bid submissions expected in the second quarter of 2012. The scheme will enable the complex to process 147,000 barrels a day (b/d) of condensate from the North field into LPG, naphtha, kerosene and gasoil.