Oman Refineries and Petrochemicals Industries Company (Orpic) has issued a solicitation of interest (SoI) for companies interested in bidding on the Liwa Plastics petrochemicals project in Sohar.

The $3.6bn project to develop the largest petrochemicals complex in the history of the country will include a steam cracker and several downstream chemicals plants.

“Potentially 10 bidders will show interest in participating in the engineering, procurement and construction (EPC) phase of this project,” says a source familiar with the project.

Orpic is planning to host a roadshow for potential EPC bidders in July before moving onto prequalifying companies for the tenders.

The EPC phase is expected to be tendered in 2015 and split into six packages including a steam cracker, polypropylene and polyethylene plants, natural gas liquids (NGL) fractionation unit and a NGL pipeline.

“Orpic has not yet decided how to combine those packages,” says the source.

In March, US-based CB&I was awarded the project front-end engineering and design (feed) contract and the cracker technology licence. Orpic also awarded the project management consultancy contract to Engineers India Limited (EIL).

Liwa Plastics is expected to be completed by 2018, doubling Orpic’s profitability by extracting higher-value products from its crude and gas supplies.

The petrochemicals plant complex will have the capacity to produce high-density polyethylene (HDPE), linear low-density polyethylene (LLDPE), polypropylene (PP) methyl tertiary butyl ether (MTBE) and butane-1.

The project has a total planned capacity of 1 million tonnes a year (t/y ) of plastics and, after its completion, Orpic will have the capacity to produce 1.4 million t/y of polyethylene and polyproylene.

Liwa Plastics received a natural gas allocation from the Oil & Gas Ministry in 2013. It will be connected to the Fahud gas plant in central Oman via a 300-kilometre pipeline.