The client, a joint venture of South Korea's Honam Petrochemical Corporation and Qatar Intermediate Holdings Company, a subsidiary of Qatar Petroleum, is close to completing the evaluation of the technical bids submitted in early July. An award should be made by the end of 2008 (MEED 7:11:08).

The three competing groups for the estimated $1bn-1.2bn contract are: Germany's Linde with South Korea's Samsung Engineering Company; KBR of the US with GS Engineering & Construction of South Korea; and CBI Lummus Global of the US with Japan's Toyo Engineering Corporation and South Korea's Hyundai Engineering & Construction Company.

Tenders for the associated downstream units are now not expected to be issued to bid until October, once commercial offers for the cracker have been received.

In addition to the 900,000-tonne-a-year (t/y) ethane/naphtha cracker, the complex will produce 600,000 t/y of styrene monomer, 200,000 t/y of polystyrene and 700,000 t/y of polypropylene.

The US’ Foster Wheeler is the joint front-end engineering and design, and project management contractor.

The project is the only cracker facility likely to be awarded in the GCC in 2008.