The Oman Tender Board has awarded a tender worth RO135.6m ($353m) for the fourth package of the Al-Batinah Expressway project.

Package four of the expressway, which involves construction of a 50km road from Halban in Muscat to Khatmat Malaha in Batinah, received 11 bids from local and international companies. Larsen & Toubro’s Omani subsidiary submitted the lowest bid.

The tender is among a total of 11 packages on the Batinah Expressway, which will extend from the current Muscat Expressway to Khatmat Malaha, located on the Oman/UAE border. The entire project is estimated to cost about RO1bn ($2.6bn).

In 2012, the ministry awarded the contract for package one of the project to local Galfar Engineering for RO138.9m.  

The contract for the second package, which was awarded in 2012 and then cancelled two months ago, has been retendered by Oman’s Ministry of Transport and Communications (MOTC).

In April, the contract for package three of the project was awarded to India’s Simplex Infrastructures for RO122.35m.

The lowest bids for packages four, five and six, which were opened on June 11, were all submitted by Larsen & Toubro.