MEED reported that French contractor Technip is the frontrunner to win USD 1 billion Qatar Petroleum construction contract to upgrade gas facilities at Dukhan and Mesaieed.

An executive close to the project said that Technip submitted the lowest bid on November 22nd 2009 for the engineering, procurement and construction contract. The other bidders were the UK’s Petrofac and a group of Athens based Consolidated Contractors Company with the US’ Black & Veatch. Italy’s Saipem submitted its own bid for the contract.

The executive said that QP plans to award the contract by the end of December 2009.

The state owned Energy Company delayed the deadline for commercial bids twice to give an in house team more time to finalize the front end engineering and design phase of the project.

Contractors submitted technical bids to build the facilities in January. The winning group will build facilities at Mesaieed such as an acid gas removal unit and an amine sweetening plant.

Contractors said that the 750 million cubic feet per day plant will primarily supply gas to Qatar’s petrochemicals and power plants. The Phase II of the contract is for an acid gas removal unit at the onshore Dukhan field. The unit will have capacity to process about 450 million cubic feet per day of gas from the Khuff reservoir.

In 2008, QP tendered the EPC contracts as two separate deals but decided in early 2009 to combine them because the two jobs are so similar.

(Sourced from MEED)