Oman Refineries and Petroleum Industries Company (Orpic) has awarded contracts to four companies for the procurement of long-lead items for the expansion of its Sohar refinery.

The state-owned downstream group received bids from 17 international companies for the work, which was tendered on 24 December 2012.

Companies winning procurement work included Italy’s ATB Riva Calzony with a deal worth $22.9m, US-based GE Oil & Gas with 7.2m, Flowserve with $11.5m and the Netherlands’ Howden Thomassen Compressors with $10.9m.

Long-lead items are equipment, products or systems that are identified at the earliest stage of a project and so their procurement does delay the development at a later stage.

The deals came after Orpic awarded the main engineering, procurement and construction (EPC) contract for the refinery expansion to a joint venture of South Korea’s Daelim Industrial and UK-based Petrofac for $2.1bn. The 50-50 joint venture will carry out the EPC work over the next 36 months, the contractors announced.

Orpic is expanding 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.

The project will include a 71,500-b/d crude distillation unit, a 96,800-b/d vacuum distillation unit, a delayed coker unit, and additional utilities and offsite facilities.