Middle East contracts awarded: April 2016

08 May 2016

Value of deals let declines while number of contracts awarded remains constant

The total value of contracts awarded declined in April to $9.15bn from $12.83bn in March. The number of deals let remained constant at 44.

Bahrain tops the list with the industrial award for the sixth phase of Aluminium Bahrain’s (Alba’s) aluminium smelter expansion, which is valued at $3.5bn.

The second-largest award went to the low bidder for the $1.5bn deal for Saudi Aramco’s Arabiyah Hasbah Development: Hasbah sour gas field expansion.

A $500m contract was awarded in Iran for the Tavanir 500MW power plant.

Bahrain and the UAE topped the list of country awards, followed by Saudi Arabia.

Kuwait and the UAE look to be hotspots in the coming months.

Bechtel wins main contract on $3.5bn Bahrain aluminium expansion

US-based engineering group Bechtel won the main contract on Bahrain’s planned $3.5bn aluminium smelter expansion, according to project owner Aluminium Bahrain (Alba).

Alba awarded the engineering, procurement and construction management (EPCM) deal to Bechtel for its expansion project, which will see the US company design and construct a sixth potline and support industrial services.

Bechtel won the EPCM contracts for the previous fourth and fifth potline expansions.

The scheme will make Alba the world’s largest single-site aluminium smelter, boosting the site’s production capacity by 540,000 tonnes a year (t/y) to 1.5 million t/y. The smelter will overtake Emirates Global Aluminium’s (EGA’s) Abu Dhabi smelter as the largest in the Middle East.

The sixth potline will have 424 pots that will use the proprietary EGA DX+ Ultra technology.

Alba was granted government approval for the project in the second quarter of 2015. The expansion is expected to be completed in 2019.

Aramco selects contractor for Hasbah gas field expansion

Saudi Aramco has selected the low bidder, India’s Larsen & Toubro (L&T) to carry out the expansion of its Hasbah offshore gas field, according to three sources familiar with the project.

L&T emerged as the low bidder for the engineering, procurement and construction (EPC) tender after state-owned Aramco asked contractors to resubmit prices. The joint bid by L&T and its Singapore-based consortium partner Emas came in at just under $1.5bn.

Aramco subsequently asked the companies to submit new prices for the tender, deeming the original bids too high as it attempts to cut costs amid the current low-crude-price environment.

The Hasbah scheme will expand the production capacity of the gas field by an additional 2 billion cubic feet a day (cf/d), which will be piped to the onshore under-development Fadhili gas plant.

Saudi Arabia recently started the first production of gas from the Hasbah field. The new facilities have a capacity of 1.3 billion cf/d and are now piping gas to the Wasit processing plant, which was built as part of the same project.

The Hasbah expansion deal follows the four smaller Contract Release Purchase Orders (CRPO), worth more than $1bn combined, awarded to companies in Aramco’s Long-Term Agreement earlier this month, MEED revealed on 21 April.

Contract awards by country 
CountryValue ($m)
Bahrain3,000
UAE2,154
Saudi Arabia1,585
Oman902
Iran600
Egypt477
Qatar270
Jordan113
Lebanon49
Total9,150
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Read previous contract awards.

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