Saudi Aramco has asked five companies to bid for the project management and design of a new 400,000 barrels per day (bpd) refinery it plans to build at Ras Tanura, industry sources said.

The plant is one of four new builds planned by the world's top oil exporter to boost domestic refining capacity to 3.8 million bpd from around 2.1 million bpd last year.

The bids were due in for the plant on the kingdom's east coast by mid-September, sources said. The refinery will cost around $7 billion to $8 billion, one source said.

Aramco has invited bids from Bermuda-based Foster Wheeler, Japan's JGC, US-based KBR, Canada's SNC-Lavalin and Australia's WorleyParsons, the sources said.
 
Aramco aims for the plant to start up in early 2012 to supply rapidly growing domestic demand. Saudi Arabia's oil consumption rose 6.2 per cent last year to just over 2 million barrels per day as record oil revenues fed economic expansion.

Saudi Arabia said it would invite bids for another new refinery, the 250,000 to 400,000 bpd Jizan plant, in the fourth quarter this year.

KBR, a former unit of Halliburton, already has another project management contract at Ras Tanura for the nearby $20 billion-plus Ras Tanura petrochemical plant to be built by Aramco and US Dow Chemicals.

That plant will be one of the largest of its kind in the world.

Saudi Arabia has also signed deals worth $12 billon for two new joint venture refineries, one with France's Total at Jubail and the other with US ConocoPhillips in Yanbu. Each plant will have 400,000 bpd capacity. Reuters