Petroleum Development Oman (PDO) has invited companies to bid for the engineering, procurement and construction (EPC) contract on a gas pipeline project in the sultanate.

Interested contractors have been asked to submit commercial bids by 15 July to build a 157 kilometre, 20-inch carbon steel pipeline at the Barik field in Al-Wusta governorate, central Oman.

The pipeline will run in a loop from Barik to several block valve stations. The EPC contract, estimated to be worth up to $50m, is expected to be awarded in the fourth quarter of 2012 and carried out over 2.5 years.

PDO is 60 per cent owned by the government of Oman, with the UK/Dutch Shell, France’s Total and Portugal’s Partex owning the rest of the shares.

This week the company said its operations were returning to normal after a strike by contract workers, which disrupted some of its supplies.