Senior executives of Technip, which is building an ethane cracker linked to the NGL plant, were in Tehran in late October to discuss the project with IOOC and its parent company, National Iranian Oil Company (NIOC).

Technip is expected to stick quite closely to the terms, liabilities and prices named by JGC, whose consortium bid $1,260 million for the project. The second placed bidder was a consortium comprising Japan's Kawasaki Heavy Industries, Sharjah-based Petrofac Internationaland Jahanparsand Kayson Group, both local.

It is unclear what synergies can be achieved between the NGL and cracker parts of the project if Technip is the main contractor on both. National Petrochemical Company (NPC), which is the client for the Kharg cracker project, has made enquiries with NIOC to try and take over the upstream project from IOOC to ensure the two projects run to a common schedule.

The Kharg NGL project will involve the construction of onshore facilities with capacity of 262 million cubic feet a day (cf/d) of liquefied petroleum gas (LPG), 2,280 tonnes a day (t/d) of ethane, 2,196 t/d of propane, 1,525 t/d of butane, 2,443 barrels a day (b/d) of pentane and 4,811 b/d of condensates. The financing is being arranged by Japan's Mitsui & Company.