The largest contract award in January by far was the 4.3bn engineering, procurement and construction (EPC) contract won by the UK’s Petrofac and Athens-based Consolidated Contractors Company (CCC)  for the Lower Fars heavy oil (LFHO) development project, with a bid of $4.3bn.

The single EPC tender is for the first phase of the project’s development and includes the construction of a steam injection facility, production facilities, a support complex, tank farms and a 270,000 barrel-a-day (b/d) pipeline to transport the heavy crude to the planned new refinery at Al-Zour in the south of Kuwait.

State upstream operator KOC first issued a tender for the phase one facilities in October 2013, but the bidding process saw repeated delays.

Under the government’s plans, the development of heavy oil assets in the country is expected to help compensate for declines in conventional oil production. Spread over 1,200 square kilometres in Kuwait’s northern desert, the Lower Fars reservoir contains between 7 billion and 15 billion barrels of oil in place.

The other notable awards were secured by the resurgent Abu Dhabi-based Al-Jaber Group, which last year completed a $4.5bn debt restructuring deal, following financial difficulties.

It won two road contracts worth $545m in Abu Dhabi. Abu Dhabi General Services (Musanada) awarded the contracts for improvements to two sections of the Mafraq to Ghuweifat highway. The two sections of the project include the construction of highways and interchanges from Baynounah Forest to Al-Mirfa.

Al-Jaber Group was also awarded a $480m contract for the construction of Abha airport in Saudi Arabia. The project, which will take 36 months to complete, entails the construction of a new passenger terminal with a total area of 86,000 square metres that will accommodate 5 million passengers annually.