Oman Oil Refineries and Petroleum Industries Company (Orpic) has invited contractors to apply for pre-qualification for the engineering, procurement and construction (EPC) contracts on the Liwa Plastics Project (LPP) at Sohar Port.

The prequalification invitation, which includes four packages, covers all of the key components of the LLP, which is estimated to cost about $3.6 billion.

The four packages are:
• Package LPP-EPC-1: Steam cracker with off-site works and utilities
• Package LPP-EPC-2: Polyethylene and polypropylene units with off-site works and utilities
• Package LPP-EPC-3: Natural Gas Liquids (NGL) extraction unit with off-site works and utilities
• Package LPP-EPC-4: NGL pipeline.

The giant scheme is proposed to be established adjacent to the ongoing Sohar Refinery Improvement Project (SRIP) under way at the industrial port of Sohar. It features, among other things, a 900,000 tonne per year (tpy) ethylene cracking plant, an high-density polyethylene (HDPE) plant, a linear low-density polyethylene (LLDPE) plant, new polypropylene plant, methyl tertiary-butyl ether (MTBE) plant, a butene-1 plant and associated utility and offsite facilities.

Also envisioned as part of this project is a natural gas liquids (NGL) extraction facility, which will be set up at Fahud and linked to the Sohar plant via a roughly 300-km pipeline.

"Should the applicant wish to apply to be prequalified for more than one of the above EPC packages, then it should submit separate and entirely stand-alone applications for each of the packages," the tender document said.

Only single entities (not joint ventures or consortia) are eligible to seek prequalification in stage one. However, applicants that may intend to form joint ventures or consortia when the EPC tender is eventually floated can register their interest as well, it said.