Bahrain Petroleum Company (Bapco) has received bids from four contractors for the engineering, procurement and construction (EPC) contract for a sulphur recovery unit at the company’s Sitra oil refinery.

Four international EPC contractors have submitted bids for the project, with France’s Technip being the lowest. The bids were:

• JGC Corporation (Japan): $21.9m
• GS Engineering & Construction (South Korea): $18.8m
• Samsung Engineering (South Korea): $18.7m
• Technip (France): $16.6m

MEED reported in June that Bapco has set a tight timeline for its planned $6.5bn rehabilitation and expansion at its refinery complex. The full rehabilitation will add about 100,000 barrels a day (b/d) of refined products to the capacity of the plant. The complex will also produce petrochemicals, most likely olefins, after work is completed.

Technology selection is expected to be completed by the end of the third quarter of 2012 and the front-end engineering and design (feed) tender issued by the first quarter of 2013 at the latest.

The initial plan by Bapco was to push production up to 500,000-600,000 b/d, but this was considered unviable at the Sitre site. A compromise of adding 100,000 b/d plus petrochemicals means that it can be feasible without having to completely rebuild a lot of the current facilities.

The $6.5bn budget has also increased dramatically from the $2bn figure mooted in 2011 because of the highly technical nature of the work, which involves merging new equipment with the older facilities already in place.