Saudi Aramco is evaluating bids for the front-end engineering (feed) contract that will cover the PetroRabigh clean fuels project at the Rabigh refinery on the Red Sea coast of Saudi Arabia.

A total of seven international engineering consultancies are bidding for the contract which is in line with the kingdom’s policy of significantly lowering the sulphur content of its refined products. When completed the refinery will meet global product specification requirements by reducing the sulphur content of gasoline to 10 parts-per-million (ppm).

The engineering consultancies bidding for the project are:

• Foster Wheeler (US)
• Jacobs Engineering (US)
• JGC Corporation (Japan)
• KBR (US)
• Sinopec (China)
• Tecnicas Reunidas (Spain)
• WorleyParsons (Australia)

“The clean fuels work has been getting rolled out across the kingdom and Rabigh plant is next in line,” says source familiar with the deal. “All of the bidders have expansive experience so it is an open field on this one.”

The scope of work for the feed includes designing the new facilities as well as an extensive equipment list. This process will include liaising with technology providers to establish the most cost-effective technology. From this the capital expenditure of the project will be establish as will the operational expenditure for when construction is completed.

The exact budget of the scheme has not yet been established but it is expected to run to as least $1bn. The amount of man-hours required for the feed is expected to be several hundred thousand.

Saudi Aramco has a number of clean fuels schemes at the majority of its domestic refinery facilities. The Ras Tanura and Riyadh refineries are both at the feed phase of their respective clean fuels programmes.

The Rabigh refinery has been in operation since 1989 and has a capacity of 400,000 barrels-a-day. it is connected to the refining and petrochemicals complex PetroRabigh, a joint venture between Aramco and Japan’s Sumitomo Chemical.