Bahrain’s Oil and Gas Holding Company (Nogaholding) has signed a $570m murabaha (Islamic finance) facility.

The finance is for general purposes, but will be partially used as equity in projects worth more than $7bn over five years.

These include the $5bn Bahrain Petroleum Company (Bapco) refinery modernisation, the $900m Bahrain LNG import terminal and Bahrain national gas company (Banagas) $500m gas processing facilities expansion.

The five-year deal is Nogaholding’s first syndicated finance deal.

Three international and seven regional lenders participated. They are local Arab Banking Corporation (ABC), Ahli United Bank (AUB), Arab Petroleum Investments Corporation (Apicorp), Gulf International Bank (GIB), and National Bank of Bahrain (NBB), Qatar Islamic Bank (QIB), Kuwait Finance House (KFH), Japan’s Bank of Tokyo-Mitsubishi UFJ, France’s BNP Paribas and the UK’s HSBC.

The size of the facility was increased by 60 per cent due to high demand, and was still oversubscribed.

“I am pleased to announce the closing of this syndicated financing which is designed to help Nogaholding fulfil its ambitious plans to further expand its portfolio,” said Nogaholding CEO Mohamed bin Khalifa al-Khalifa in a press release. “We were very pleased with the strong support for the transaction among Bahraini, international and regional banks alike… We are embracing the opportunity presented by the prevailing challenging market conditions.”

Bahrain LNG and Banagas are preparing to syndicate loans to develop their projects. Bahrain LNG, a project company for the development of the import terminal, is seeking around $600m of project finance on a 20-year tenor. Banagas is seeking $400m of debt over ten years.

Major contracts on both projects have been awarded in the last five months.

Bapco has appointed GIB and HSBC as advisors for the refinery upgrade, but the finance deal is still thought to be in the early stages.

Bapco has selected Australia’s Worley Parsons as project managers and invited expressions of interest for the engineering, procurement and construction (EPC) packages.