Fujairah-headquartered Vopak Horizons has pushed back the bid deadline for a contract to expand its oil terminal in the northern emirate.

The company originally set a bid closing date of 31 August for the engineering, procurement, and construction (EPC) deal. It has now pushed the deadline back to 12 October after requests from bidders for more time to prepare their proposals.

The winning contractor will add 600,000 cubic metres of storage facilities adding to the terminal’s current capacity of 1.5 million cubic metres. It will also build four berths, bringing the total number of berths at the terminal to 10.

Seven international and local contractors have prequalified to bid on the deal, but only five say that they will submit proposals in October. They are Italy’s Belleli Energy, Fujairah-headquartered Audex, the US’ Chicago Bridge & Iron (CB&I), Punj Lloyd and Tata Projects, both of India.

Contractors estimate the contract is worth $110m.

Vopak originally planned to add 1.2 million cubic metres and between four and six berths. However, the company decided to split the development into two phases following in-house front-end engineering and design studies (MEED 7:8:09).

Vopak scaled back the expansion after Fujairah Municipality decided to build its own oil storage terminal on neighbouring land. The municipality’s terminal will compete directly with the Vopak terminal.

Vopak also feared the neighbouring terminal would disrupt construction work on its own terminal if it tried to add all 1.2 million cubic metres of extra capacity in one phase.

Abu Dhabi plans to complete a 1.5 million-barrel-a-day oil pipeline connecting the Habshan oil field in Abu Dhabi with Fujairah, to bypass the congested Strait of Hormuz, by 2010.