Saudi Aramco has extended the bid deadline for the engineering, procurement and construction (EPC) contracts for the $700m-$1bn Clean Transportation Fuels Project (CTFP) at its Riyadh refinery.

Contractors were invited to bid for the packages at the scheme, which is part of Aramco’s plan to reduce the sulphur content in the gasoline and diesel it produces in August with a deadline initially planned for mid-October. That has now been pushed back to early January.

“The Riyadh refinery is an old facility and it has taken contractors longer than anticipated to make pre-site estimates in regards to all aspects of the EPC process,” says an oil and gas source based in Saudi Arabia. “The lack of available information and data has meant that they requested more time to prepare bids.”  

The scope of works includes new isomerisation, naphtha-splitting and sulphur guard-bed units, as well as a diesel hydrotreater reactors. Other work includes the debottlenecking of the hydrocracker and gas concentration units and replacement of crude and vacuum distillation tower internals.

Contractors looking to bid on the Riyadh scheme include:

• Daelim Industrial (South Korea)
• GS Engineering & Construction (South Korea)
• Hyundai Engineering & Construction (South Korea)
• Petrofac (UK)
• Samsung Engineering (South Korea)
• SK Engineering & Construction (South Korea)
• Technip (France)
• Tecnicas Reunidas (Spain)

MEED reported in July 2011 that the US’ Foster Wheeler had been awarded the front-end engineering and design (feed) for the project.

Aramco has initiated several similar clean fuels schemes at both its domestic wholly owned and joint-venture refineries, including its facilities at Ras Tanura, Yanbu and Rabigh.

The schemes are part of Aramco’s fuel quality roadmap aims to cut air pollution by supplying ultra-low sulphur diesel for domestic use.

This involves lowering the sulphur content in diesel for transportation to 10 parts a million. This will bring the kingdom’s fuel in line with international standards. Aramco is looking to reduce sulphur in its diesel by 95 per cent by 2016