South Korea’s GS Engineering & Construction (E&C) has emerged as the frontrunner to win an estimated $3bn-plus contract to upgrade the Ruwais refinery in Abu Dhabi, sources familiar with the project told MEED.

State-owned Abu Dhabi Oil Refining Company (Takreer) is planning to upgrade existing units at the Ruwais refinery site in the far west of Abu Dhabi. The work will include modifying existing units in order to process 420,000 barrels a day (b/d) of offshore crude.

GS E&C submitted the lowest commercial bid out of the three companies vying for the tender, according to sources. The other two firms bidding for the deal are South Korea’s Samsung Engineering and Spain-based Tecnicas Reunidas.

Takreer, which is a subsidiary of state-owned Abu Dhabi National Oil Company (Adnoc), is likely to make a decision to award the contract in the coming weeks.

The work will include upgrades on units completed in the Ruwais refinery expansion project, which was commissioned in 2015 and which doubled the existing capacity of the site to more than 800,000 b/d.

The new project, named the processing offshore crude project at Ruwais refinery, will allow Abu Dhabi to produce refined products from offshore oil.

Abu Dhabi is currently undertaking a major expansion of the offshore Upper Zakum field and is carrying out greenfield developments at fields such as Nasr, Satah al-Razboot (Sarb) and Umm al-Lulu.

The vast majority of offshore crude is currently processed at facilities on islands in the Gulf before being exported. The new project will allow Adnoc to process this crude into gasoline, diesel and other fuels for domestic use or export.

Takreer’s Ruwais refinery scheme is one of three major refining projects in the pre-execution phase in the UAE. The expansion of the Jebel Ali condensate refinery in Dubai and the project to build a new oil refinery in Fujairah are both in the engineering, procurement and construction (EPC) bidding phase, although the latter is significantly delayed.