The joint venture partners behind the $7.4bn Al-Sejeel petrochemicals complex have awarded Italy’s Maire Tecnimont the front-end engineering and design (feed) contract for the scheme.

Qatar Petroleum and the Qatar Petrochemicals Company are the 80:20 partners for the project, which will produce 2.2 million tonnes a year (t/y) of chemicals when completed.

Maire Tecnimont will be responsible for the feed for all technical units except the 1.4 million t/y ethane cracker. These will include 850,000 t/y of high-density polyethylene (HDPE), 430,000 t/y of linear low-density polyethylene (LDPE), 760,000 t/y of polypropylene and 83,000 t/y of butadiene will be produced.

Maire Tecnimont was a surprise choice for the scheme. The Italian engineering company beat companies such as the US’ Fluor, Foster Wheeler and Jacobs Engineering to land the project. The company is best known in the region for its work in the engineering, procurement and construction sector.

The US’ Bechtel will carry out the project management consultancy for the scheme.

MEED reported in September that the tenders for the two available feed contracts had been released. The bidders for the ethane cracker include:

• CB&I Lummus (US)
• KBR (US)
• Linde (Germany)
• Technip (France)

The EPC tenders are expected to be released in early 2015. The partners signed technology licences in June with two US firms: Univation Technologies for the polyethylene units and Dow Chemical for the polypropylene units. The construction tender and execution phases will follow in 2014-15. Completion is expected in 2018.

The cracker forms part of an ambitious strategy by Doha to increase petrochemicals output from the current 9 million t/y to 23 million t/y by 2020. QP is also planning the Al-Karaana petrochemicals complex, a joint venture with the UK/Dutch Shell Group.