The joint venture partners behind a new $9bn-plus refinery at Yanbu on Saudi Arabia’s Red Sea Coast have pushed back the bid deadline for the last major construction project on the project until June as they continue to work on the technical details of the scheme.

State energy firm Saudi Aramco and the US’ ConocoPhillips have asked firms lining up to bid on the deal to submit their final bids on the deal on 1 June, rather than 22 March as they had earlier requested.

The deal, to build a $450m solids handling plant, was originally due to be tendered in early January along with the other main construction deals for the plant. It was pushed back to March, while Aramco reworked the design. Further amendments to the scope of the scheme has led the partners to push the deal back further, sources hoping to bid on the contract tell MEED.

Aramco and ConocoPhillips entered into talks over the deals to build the main process and storage units at the 400,000 barrel a day export refinery in early March (MEED 9:3:2010).