Petroleum Development Oman (PDO) has released the tender for its Zauliyah gas plant project.

The tender was released in October and will cover the engineering, procurement and construction (EPC) contracts for the project, located at Al-Wusta in west central Oman.

The scheme is being initiated by PDO in order to process the gas produced in the Zauliyah oilfield. The scope of works will include gas handling facilities, gas processing trains, pipelines and associated works.

The value of the project is believed to be in the region of $100-200m and the bid deadline is January 2012. Australia’s WorleyParsons is conducting the front-end engineering and design (feed).

“Oman is gas poor so PDO is trying to maximise all of the assets it has in this regard,” say a contracting source based in Oman. “It has a number of similar projects around the sultanate.”

An award on the EPC contract is expected to be made in the second quarter of 2012. Construction should end by the second quarter of 2014.   

PDO is a joint venture that is responsible for the majority of upstream activities in Oman. The Oman government has a 60 per cent share with the UK/Dutch Shell owning 34 per cent. France’s Total and Portugal’s Partex Oil & Gas have minority stakes of 4 per cent and 2 per cent respectively.