Five major deals dominated the contract awards for the month of August. South Korea’s Hyundai Heavy Industries (HHI) secured the largest deal by winning a $3.3bn contract from the Saudi Electricity Company (SEC) to build the 2,640MW Shuqaiq power plant in Saudi Arabia. The contractor will build the steam plant on a turnkey basis, which will include engineering, procurement and construction (EPC), testing and commissioning.

The plant will be located on the Red Sea coast, about 580 kilometres south of Jeddah and is scheduled to be commissioned in 2017.

The second largest deal was a $1.69bn contract issued by Abu Dhabi Marine Operating Company to UAE-based National Petroleum Construction Company (NPCC) in a consortium with France’s Technip for package two of the offshore Umm al-Lulu full field development project. The consortium won the EPC package ahead of a rival bid from South Korea’s Samsung Engineering.

The award complements the $765m EPC contract Adma-Opco awarded to NPCC for package 1 of the Umm al-Lulu full field development earlier in the year.

Another mega contract won in August, by Italy’s Salini Impregilo Group, is to build the first phase of a new coastal highway in Libya. The group, which includes Italian contractors La Societa Italiana per Condotte diAcqua, Impresa Pizzarotti and Cooperativa Muratori & Cementisti, will build a 400-kilometre stretch of road from the city of Marj in Libya to Emsaad on the Egyptian border.

The $1.29bn deal is the latest in a string of recent awards won by Impregilo in the Middle East and North Africa region. In July, a consortium led by Salini Impregilo won a $6bn contract to build the 40km line 3 of the Riyadh Metro.

Saudi Arabia’s Housing Ministry also issued eight contracts last month worth a total of just over $1bn for infrastructure works on new homes to be built across the kingdom. The ministry says 26 million square metres of plots will be developed in Jeddah, Medina, Dammam, Al-Ahsa, Qatif, Tabuk and Al-Kharj as part of an initiative by King Abdullah to provide more land and housing loans to citizens in the country.

The other mega contract awarded in August was issued by Saudi Aramco to Germany’s Siemens to supply components for its planned gasification project that will be constructed next to the $7bn Jizan refinery in south west Saudi Arabia.

The deal, worth $966.8m, will see Siemens provide the components for a combined-cycle power plant with a capacity of 4,000MW. This will make it the largest gasification power plant in the world.