State-owned Oman Oil Refineries and Petroleum Industries Comopany (Orpic) said it had finalised negotiations with preferred bidders for $4.5 billion worth of contracts to build a major plastics complex in the sultanate.

The four engineering, procurement and contracting packages will be completed in four years, with plants to be commissioned in 2019, Orpic said in a statement on Wednesday.

The Omani petrochemical company is set to award a contract for its plastics units to Italy's Tecnimont, while a contract for natural gas liquids extraction facilities will be given to South Korea's GS Engineering and Construction and Japan's Mitsui & Co.

India's Punj Lloyd will be awarded a contract for a major pipeline, Orpic said in a statement.

Earlier in the day, the Omani firm had awarded a $2.8 billion engineering, procurement and construction contract to a joint venture of Netherlands-headquartered Chicago Bridge & Iron Company (CB&I) and Taiwanese group CTCI Corporation for a steam cracker and utilities unit.

With 125 years of experience and the expertise of 54,000 employees, CB&I is a major player in the global infrastructure industry, while CTCI Corporation, founded in 1979 with headquarters in Taipei, is the largest EPC firm in Taiwan.

As per the contract, the CB&I venture will cover the Package One, which includes the steam cracker and associated utilities for the Liwa Plastics Industrial Complex Project in Sohar region, said a statement from the Dutch group.

The scope of work includes EPC for a grassroots 880-ktpa ethylene plant, pygas unit and MTBE (methyl tertiary butyl ether) unit, as well as all the related off-sites and utilities.

CB&I said its scope of work also includes the construction of cryogenic and atmospheric storage tanks and pipe spool fabrication.

As previously announced, the cracker will employ CB&I's latest, proven ethylene technology, including highly selective SRT cracking heaters, and its innovative recovery section design, featuring low-pressure separation and mixed refrigeration, it added.

Commenting on the win, president and CEO Philip K. Asherman, said: "CB&I is pleased to have been selected for this significant project following the successful completion of the front end engineering and design of the Liwa Plastics Project for Orpic."

"This new award builds upon the successful relationship between Orpic and CB&I and is a testament of our customer's confidence in our experience and world-class project execution capabilities," he added.

Orpic chief executive Musab Al Mahruqi said he expected to sign the contracts and financing deals by the end of this year.

"We are concluding discussions with export credit agencies, commercial banks and other relevant authorities and we expect to finalise the project funding plan by the end of the year, enabling us to award the respective EPC contracts," he added.-TradeArabia News Service