State-owned Qatar Petroleum (QP) and its joint venture partner, US oil major ExxonMobil have pushed back the deadline for technical submissions on the onshore portion of the Barzan gas development by one week to 20 August.

Technical and un-priced commercial submissions were originally due on 13 August, sources close to the project tell MEED.

Contractors had hoped for a longer extension. “We were expecting at least a month”, says one executive at a firm bidding on the deal estimated at $1.7bn.

Commercial bids will be offered in October, according to the bidding firms although no firm date has been set.

QP prequalified four groups to bid for the onshore portion of the deal after contractors submitted documents at the end of March. These include:

• Technip (France)
• Saipem (Italy), CTCI Corporation (Taiwan)
• Chiyoda Corporation (Japan), Samsung Engineering (South Korea)
• JGC (Japan)

Technical bids for the offshore portion of the Barzan gas scheme were submitted on 15 July (MEED 22:7:10).

The project aims to produce 6.2 billion cubic feet a day (cf/d) to meet the natural gas requirements of Qatar’s power and water generating companies as well as providing potential feedstock for downstream petrochemicals production. The first phase, due for completion by the end of 2013 involves the construction of two onshore gas processing trains with a combined capacity of 1.7 billion cf/d.