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

Contractors have now been 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.

“The tenders are out now and there is a lot of interest in this work from contractors because it is one of the first major brownfield projects being rolled out by Aramco,” says a Saudi Arabia-based contracting source familiar with the contract. “Contractors will be hoping that securing work on the Riyadh refinery will put them in a good position for the bigger projects coming up, such as Ras Tanura and Yanbu.”

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.

The closing date for bids is 20 October. 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. The work was carried out in the kingdom at Al-Khobar in the Eastern province alongside Foster Wheeler’s local partners local A al-Saihati, A Fattani & O al-Othman Consulting Engineering Company (Sofcon).

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.