Kuwait National Petroleum Corp. plans to award the contracts to build a new $14.6 billion refinery to process crude oil for domestic power plants by the end of April, a company official said Thursday.
"The plan is to award the packages hopefully by the end of this month," project manager Khaled Al Awadi told Dow Jones Newswires by phone from Kuwait.
KNPC is presently in the final phase of evaluating the bids received in late December from international companies, including JGC Corp. and Snamprogetti, for four separate packages covering the construction of the Al Zour refinery.
The offers are within budget, Al Awadi said. Kuwait last year decided to raise the budget for the project after bids came in at more than double the original $6.3 billion budget in December 2006.
The 615,000-barrel a day Al Zour refinery, Kuwait's fourth, will mainly produce low-sulfur fuel oil for the country's power plants.