India’s Punj Lloyd is the frontrunner to win a $40m deal to build a series of nitrogen pipelines at the Habshan gas field in central Abu Dhabi after submitting the lowest price in a March bid round.

Final bids for the engineering, procurement and construction (EPC) deal were submitted by three international engineering firms in early March, sources with knowledge of the scheme tell MEED.

Abu Dhabi Gas Industries Company (Gasco), the client on the scheme, evaluated cost proposals during the week ended 11 March. The local National Petroleum Construction Company (NPCC) and Pakistan’s Descon also bid on the project.

The project is part of a wider scheme to use nitrogen produced by a joint venture of Abu Dhabi National Oil Company (Adnoc) and Germany’s Linde, Adnoc Linde Industrial Gases (Elixier) at Mirfa, 45km west of Habshan, to boost production at the field.

The deal, known as the nitrogen gas injection mix gate project, will see the winning firm build a series of nitrogen pipelines to sites across the field along with a unit linking them with a main pipeline carrying nitrogen from Mirfa.

Linde is building the Mirfa plant along with Descon, while India’s Dodsal is building the main pipeline linking the two sites. US/Canadian SNC Lavalin won the front end engineering and design deal to design the nitrogen injection and carbon dioxide facilities at Habshan in early February (MEED 2:2:10).