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Contractors submit prices for Oman gas plant expansion

13 June 2025

Contractors have submitted commercial bids to Petroleum Development Oman (PDO) for a project to expand the Birba gas station in the Dhofar governorate in southern Oman.

Through the scheme, known as the Budour-Northeast Birba integrated project, PDO intends to execute engineering, procurement, construction and commissioning of units to process additional volumes of sour gas.

Contractors submitted prices for the Budour-Northeast Birba integrated project by the deadline of 11 June, according to sources.

MEED recently reported that a two-party race was under way for the main EPC contract for the Budour-Northeast Birba integrated project. Egypt’s Engineering for the Petroleum & Process Industries (Enppi) and India-based Larsen & Toubro Energy Hydrocarbon (L&TEH) are the only contractors competing for the job.

Aside from Enppi and L&TEH, Greece/Lebanon-headquartered Consolidated Contractors Company (CCC) and Abu Dhabi’s NMDC Energy were understood to have submitted technical bids, but have since thought to have pulled out of the competition.

MEED previously reported that contractors had submitted technical bids for the project by the deadline of 30 January.

The Budour-Northeast Birba integrated project is estimated to be worth about $300m, MEED previously reported.

The greenfield and brownfield scope of work on the project covers the following:

  • New separator train at the Birba gas station to perform three-stage separation
  • New gas dehydration unit
  • Two new gas injection compressors
  • New gas recovery compressor
  • New gas booster compressor
  • Installation of utility units, such as electrical infrastructure, flare system, drainage, etc
  • New high-pressure flare
  • New instrumentation air package
  • New nitrogen system
  • New drainage vessel
  • Debottlenecking of AP flare header by increasing the flare header size
  • Modification inside existing 33kV gas-insulated switchgear in Birba gas station substation
  • Modification of existing 6.6kV switchboard
  • Interfaces with existing control room
  • Civil and piping interfaces within the Birba gas station facility

Separately, PDO is in the process of shortlisting contractors to participate in a front-end engineering and design (feed) to engineering, procurement and construction (EPC) competition that it has initiated for a project to build an integrated facility to produce natural gas from the Budour and Tayseer fields in Oman.

The project aims to expand the capacity of the existing gas production and processing facility at Tayseer. It represents the second development phase of the gas field. Through the project, PDO is also seeking to appraise, produce and process sweet gas from the Budour field, which is about 50 kilometres (km) west of the Tayseer field.

PDO has adopted the feed-to-EPC competition model after abandoning an earlier design, build, own, operate and maintain (DBOOM) tendering exercise for the Budour-Tayseer combined gas processing facility.

ALSO READ: PDO plans to create pool of EPC contractors
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Indrajit Sen

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