The largest contract award by far during November was the $2.1bn contract won by a joint venture of South Korea’s Daelim Industrial and UK-based Petrofac for the expansion of the Sohar oil refinery in Oman.

The 50:50 joint venture of Daelim and Petrofac will carry out the engineering, procurement and construction (EPC) work over a 36 month period. Project owner Oman Refineries & Petroleum Industries Company (Orpic) wants to expand the refinery’s capacity to 187,000 barrels a day (b/d), from 116,000 b/d, to meet growing demand for fuel and petrochemicals feedstock.

There were no other contract awards in November that topped $1bn. Only two deals were valued at more than $500m. The first was a $700m order secured by the US’ GE from Saudi Electricity Company (SEC) for the supply of turbines and generators for power plants.

The firm will provide 12 combined-cycle gas turbines, four steam turbines and 16 generators, which will be used for SEC’s planned PP13 and PP14 facilities. PP13 will be located next to SEC’s PP11 and PP12 plants at Dhurma, near Riyadh, and PP14 will be located next to PP10. The PP13 and PP14 facilities will have a combined generating capacity of about 3,800MW.

The deal also includes two contractual service agreements, one for each site, which cover maintenance of the units for a fixed eight-year period. The firm will begin shipping the equipment to the kingdom in early 2015.

The other deal valued at over $500m was the $600m contract won by Spain’s Intecsa Industrial for the fertiliser package at Saudi Arabian Mining Company’s (Maaden) proposed $7bn phosphates mining city, known as Waad al-Shamal.