Duqm Refinery and Petrochemical Industries Company (DRPIC), a joint venture between Oman Oil Company (OOC) and state-owned Kuwait Petroleum International (KPI), is moving forward on both the financing and contracting for its planned greenfield refinery in the Duqm region of the sultanate.

The 230,000 barrel-per-day refinery project will come up in the new downstream hub under development at Duqm in Al-Wusta governorate on the east-central coast.

Several construction packages are out to tender, with technical evaluation of bids completed for the main contracts and a shortlist recently released for a third major job, according to Oil Pro.

The news follows the replacement of the government shareholder’s foreign partner in November.

Commercial bids were invited by DRPIC in late 2016 following completion of technical evaluation for the two main engineering, procurement and construction (EPC) packages, covering the process units and the offsites and utilities (O&U), on the planned refinery, it stated.

The top bidders for the process units package include consortiums of the Netherlands-based CB&I with Taiwan’s CTCI; Japan’s JGC Corp with South Korea’s GS Engineering & Construction and Italy’s Saipem; the UK’s Petrofac with Japan’s Chiyoda Corporation and South Korea’s Samsung Engineering; besides that of Spain’s Tecnicas Reunidas (TR) with South Korea’s Daewoo Engineering & Construction, said the report.

The JGC/GS/Saipem and TR/Daewoo teams are also bidding for the O&U contract, as are Petrofac with Samsung and a consortium of Hyundai Engineering & Construction and Hyundai Engineering, both of South Korea, with Japan’s Itochu Corp.

Government-owned OOC has a 50 per cent stake in the DRPIC. Last year it had signed an agreement whereby KPI took over the equal stake formerly held by the Abu Dhabi government’s International Petroleum Investment Company.

On completion, the greenfield refinery will produce chiefly diesel, jet fuel, LPG and naphtha and also include units for hydrocracking, hydrotreating, delayed coking, sulphur recovery, hydrogen generation and merox treating.