Duqm Refinery, a joint venture between Oman Oil Company and Kuwait Petroleum International, has awarded three main engineering, procurement and construction (EPC) contracts for the refinery project coming up in the Al Wusta region of Oman, reports said.

The EPC contract for building the proposed 230,000-barrels-per-day capacity refinery’s main processing plants was awarded to a joint venture of Tecnicas Reunidas and Daewoo Engineering & Construction. the Times of Oman report said.

Petrofac in joint venture with Samsung Engineering won the contract for engineering, procurement, construction, commissioning, training and start-up operations of all the utilities and offsites at Duqm. The contract is worth $2 billion and work on the 47-month project will commence shortly, Petrofac said.

The third package for building a product export terminal at the Duqm port, dedicated crude storage tanks in Ras Markaz and an 80-km-long pipeline connecting crude tanks with the refinery was awarded to Italy's Saipem. The contract is valued at $800 million.

The refinery is expected to start commercial operations in 2021 and will come up in the Duqm Special Economic Zone of the Al Wusta region.

Duqm Refinery is seeking a $5-billion syndicated term loan from the overseas markets to fund the $7-billion refinery project.

Duqm Refinery said Amec Foster Wheeler (AFW) will be appointed as the Project Management Consultant for the EPC phase of the refinery.

As much as 65 per cent of the crude feedstock for the refinery will come from Kuwait, while the remaining 35 per cent will be supplied by the sultanate.

It is a grassroots refinery which aims to produce light/middle distillates at a high efficiency rate. It focuses on naphtha, jet fuel, diesel and LPG as its primary products. The refinery comprises hydrocracking, hydro-treating and delayed coking units, along with sulphur recovery, hydrogen generation and merox treating units.