There was only one contract awarded in May that exceeded $1bn. It was secured by Spain’s Tecnicas Reunidas (TR) for the offsites and utilities package at Saudi Aramco’s planned integrated gasification combined-cycle (IGCC) power project at Jizan Economic City (JEC) in the southwest of the Saudi Arabia.

The $1.7bn contract is due to be completed in 2017.

The second largest award in May was secured by UK group Petrofac for the construction of the North Reggane treatment plant, gas-gathering system and export pipeline in southwestern Algeria.

The three-year, $976m engineering, procurement and construction (EPC) contract was awarded by the Groupement Reggane joint venture; a partnership of Algeria’s state-owned Sonatrach, Spain’s Repsol, Germany-based RWE Dea and Italian group Edison.

It involves the construction of the gas treatment plant, gas gathering system and an export pipeline, with the project having a processing capacity of 283 million cubic feet a day (cf/d).

The project is located in the Reggane basin on the Algerian Sahara desert 1,500 kilometres southwest of Algiers. It will bring onstream 26 wells from four fields – Reggane, Kahlouche, Kahlouche South and Azrafil South East.

The third largest contract was won by South Korea’s Daewoo Engineering and Construction for a major new road project in Qatar. The $910m deal involves building part of the New Orbital Highway and Truck Route for Qatar’s Public Works Authority (Ashghal).

The work entails engineering and design as well as construction of the road. The project is expected to take 35 months to complete.

The 200km-long highway connects Ras Laffan Industrial City with the Mesaieed region, with Daewoo winning the fourth zone linking the Al-Khor Link Road with Dukhan Highway, a 42-km-stretch of the road that will have five interchanges and numerous bridges.

There were four other contracts awarded in May that were valued at more than $500m.

A $667m contract was awarded to a consortium of Saudi/Lebanese Modern Construction Company, Safari and Al-Subaie by Saudi Arabia’s General Authority for Civil Aviation (GACA) for the construction of a new airport in Jizan.

Dubai-based Drake & Scull International won a $599m contract to build utilities and offsite facilities at Carbon Holdings’ petrochemicals complex in Egypt.

Petrofac won a $535.8m deal to provide management services on the Rumaila oil field development in southern Iraq for UK-based BP and China National Petroleum Corporation (CNPC).

China Harbour Engineering Arabia secured a $550m engineering, procurement and construction contract for the water intake pipeline, water treatment facility and all accompanying pipelines and other units for its $8.5bn gasification project at Jizan in Saudi Arabia for Saudi Aramco.