International Refining, Rail and Steel Companies Pile into Oman's Project Pipeline

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Written by Richard Finlayson, Senior International Editor for Industrial Info Resources (Sugar Land, Texas)--Oman has a stream of projects in the pipeline, with recent announcements covering the refining, steel and transport sectors. International engineering companies are on the bidding shortlist for a $1.2 billion contract to expand the refinery at Sohar. The total expansion project is estimated at $1.5 billion to $1.8 billion and is being managed by Oman Oil Refineries and Petroleum Industries Company (Orpic), the state-owned integrated refining and petrochemicals organization.

Orpic oversees the management of Oman's refineries at Mina Al Fahal and Sohar, as well as aromatics and polypropylene plants at the Sohar industrial port.

The expansion will provide an additional 60,000 barrels per day of new capacity to the refinery's present capacity of 116 barrels per day of crude and long-residue processing. A delayed coker unit is also being planned to minimize excess low-value bitumen production and increase the production of high-value products such as liquefied petroleum gas, naphtha and diesel.

The bidding companies are Technip S.A. (France), TecnicasReunidas (Spain) and Hyundai Engineering (South Korea), and joint ventures of Larsen &Toubro (India) and GS Engineering (South Korea); Petrofac (England) and Daelim (South Korea); Daewoo (South Korea) and Lurgi (Germany); and Chiyoda (Japan), Samsung Engineering (South Korea) and JGC (Japan).

A $155 million design and consulting contract for Oman's first major railway is under bidding, with the first deadline on October 5, after the original July deadline was extended.

The 1,000-kilometer rail project will involve an estimated investment of $1.92 billion and is scheduled for completion in 2018. The line is part of a plan to construct rail link across Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC) countries and will run from Buraimi in the north to Salalah in the south. There will be terminals at each major town on the route for freight and passengers. Each of the GCC governments will fund construction inside their borders.

Bidders include COWI (Denmark), DBI (U.S.), AECOM, Systra (France), Parsons Corporation, (U.S.) Mott Macdonald (England), a consortium of Italfer (Italy) and Worley Parsons (Australia), Egis Rail (France), the Pointec group (Nigeria), a consortium of Korea Rail and Hyundai (South Korea), and a China Railway company.

With demand for steel for major projects growing in Oman, a joint venture, Dhofar Steel, has been formed by Shalala Development, the Al Suiwaidi Group (United Arab Emirates) and the Al Tuwairqi Group (Saudi Arabia) to build a steel plant with an annual capacity of 1 million tons. This will be Oman's second steel company. Vale S.A. (Brazil) operates a pelletizing plant in Sohar. The project will create jobs for more than 1,000 Omanis. No details of the construction schedule have been released.

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