Oman Oil Refineries & Petroleum Industries Company (Orpic) has invited companies to submit bids for the construction of its proposed $3.6bn Liwa Plastics petrochemicals complex in Sohar, according to the company’s CEO.

The state-owned refiner finished prequalifying engineering, procurement and construction (EPC) contractors in early February with 19 companies now preparing to bid on four separate packages.

“Orpic has already issued the tender for the EPC packages for to the Liwa Plastics Project,” Orpic CEO Musab al-Mahruqi said in an interview with MEED. “We expect bids in by July, and anticipate awarding the project in October.”

The company recently received the front-end engineering and design (feed) study from US-based CB&I, which has also been contracted to provide the technology for the Liwa Plastics steam cracker.

Orpic is planning to build a cracker and downstream polymer plants in what will be the largest petrochemicals development in the sultanate’s history.

A final list of 19 engineering, procurement and construction (EPC) bidders has been concluded after a two-round prequalification process.

Individual companies were prequalified for the packages in the first round and, in the second round, contractors joined to form competing consortiums.

Engineers India has been appointed as the project management consultant (PMC) for the project.

The cracker will use a combination of feedstocks including natural gas liquids (NGL) extracted from natural gas, liquid petroleum gas (LPG) from the Sohar refinery and aromatics plant, dry gas from the Sohar refinery and condensates from Oman LNG.

The complex will have the capacity to produce 880,000 tonnes a year (t/y) of high density polyethylene (HDPE) and linear low density polyethylene (LLDPE); 300,000 t/y of polypropylene (PP); 90,000 t/y of methyl tert-butyl ether (MTBE); 41,000 t/y of butane; and 111,000 t/y of pyrolysis gasoline.