Kuwait has received bids from four international consortiums for the engineering, procurement and construction (EPC) of Al Ratqa heavy crude project, with UK’s Petrofac submitting the lowest offer
The bids were submitted by the Central Tenders Committee to the government-owned Kuwait Oil Company (KOC) and comprised consortiums led by Petrofac, Italy’s Saipem and South Korea’s SK Group and the GS Group, Alanba reported.
Quoting an unnamed KOC official, the newspaper said that Petrofac submitted the lowest bid of US$4.25bn for the contract, while SK Group made the second lowest bid of US$4.64bn.
Saipem submitted a bid of US$6.2bn, while SK Group presented the highest bid of US$6.5bn.
All the bids were, however, below US$7.1bn budgeted by KOC for the first phase of the project, which is expected to produce around 60,000 bpd of heavy crude from the Al Ratqa field.
According to the state-owned firm, KOC has formed a team to study the bids and that the contract will be signed before the end of 2014. The project is expected to be completed within 42 months, in addition to a 10-month period for trial operation.
The Ratqa project is part of efforts to meet Kuwait’s target of producing four million bpd of crude by 2020. OPEC member Kuwait’s current production stands at around three million bpd and exports around two-thirds of this output.
