Kuwait National Petroleum Company (KNPC) has awarded US$11.5bn worth of contracts to build the al-Zour oil refinery, which would be one of the largest in the Middle East
Kuwaiti state news agency KUNA reported that KNPC has commissioned a consortium including Spain’s Tecnicas Reunidas, China’s Sinopec and South Korea’s Hanwha Engineering and Construction to build the main process units of the refinery. The contract is worth more than US$4.2bn.
The support units and infrastructure services will be built by a consortium made up of Daewoo Engineering and Construction, Hyundai Heavy Industries and US-based Fluor Corporation under a contract that is worth about US$5.75bn.
Another consortium comprised of Hyundai Engineering and Construction, SK Engineering and Construction and Italy’s Saipem was awarded a US$1.5bn contract to build a marine export terminal, KUNA quoted KNPC spokesman Khalid al-Asousi as saying.
The last contract for the project is expected to be awarded in the first half of August 2015, while signing of all contracts is set to take place in early October, added al-Asousi.
When completed, the refinery will have a capacity of 615,000 bpd, making it one of the biggest refining plants in the world. The project was originally planned more than a decade ago but has been delayed repeatedly. Officials have said that the refinery is scheduled to start operations by late 2018 or early 2019. It will provide fuel with low sulphur content to power stations but there is no certainty of that timeframe being met.
Kuwait’s oil minister Ali Saleh al-Omair had told KUNA earlier this month, without elaborating, that there were proposals to build a petrochemical complex alongside the refinery.
