Page 13 - DMEA Week 44 2021

DMEA TENDERS DMEA

Bids submitted for Zarqa refinery expansion

MIDDLE EAST JORDAN Petroleum Refinery Co. (JoPetrol) station and Iraq’s al-Qaim substation.
this week announced that it had received bids This will provide around 1,000 GWh per
from engineering firms for a contract to expand year of electricity to Iraq. The two governments
the country’s Zarqa refinery under the so-called signed a deal last year that sought to interconnect
Project Petra. the countries’ electricity grid as part of a wider
The company said that it had received bids ‘Gulf Grid’ as Iraq attempts to wean itself off reli-
from “three consortiums comprising seven ance on Iranian electricity.
major Korean, Chinese, Japanese, Italian, Span- The most important and perhaps the most
ish and English companies”. challenging element of the bilateral deal, how-
The project is intended to raise capacity at the ever, is the plan to build a major new pipeline
100,000 barrel per day facility by around 20,000 connecting Iraq’s oil-rich Basra Governorate
bpd and is expected to cost in excess of $2.6bn with the Jordanian port of Aqaba.
with bids consisting of technical offers, financing An agreement was originally signed for a
offers and a financial offer. pipeline to Jordan in 2013 and intermittent
JoPetrol invited the companies to bid for the updates have emerged from Baghdad and
work in January and the company has already Amman over the years. Progress may now
begun the evaluation of technical offers before finally be within reach as Iraqi authorities have
moving on to the financial terms, which are now received bids from international companies
expected to involve export credit agencies. for work to construct the Basra-Aqaba crude oil
The expansion is also intended to improve the pipeline which would have a capacity of 1mn
environmental performance of Zarqa, lowering bpd, coming in at an estimated cost of $18bn.
fuel oil production and increasing that of gasoil, Speaking to the Iraqi News Agency (INA)
jet fuel and gasoline and catering to around 90% in late September, Iraqi Ambassador to Jordan
of the Kingdom’s demand. Haidar Al-Athari said: “The government has
In 2017, JoPetrol hired Honeywell and KBR received bids from a number of global compa-
for engineering work on Project Petra, which nies to build the pipeline that will transport Iraqi
was at that time expected to cost around $1.6bn. crude to Jordan.”
Spain’s Tecnicas Reunidas was then hired to Noting that “practical steps” had been taken,
carry out front-end engineering and design Al-Athari added that the “concerned authorities
(FEED) work with TechnipFMC, the project in Iraq are now considering all those bids”, with-
management consultant (PMC). out identifying any of the bidders nor indicating
The refinery north of the capital Amman has a timeline for a potential award.
been intermittently supplied by trucked imports The project is divided into two phases: the
from Kirkuk in northern Iraq since imports first phase includes installing a 700-km pipeline
resumed in 2019. The 2019 agreement provided with a capacity of 2.25mn bpd from Rumaila to
for Jordan to purchase oil at a $16 per barrel dis- Haditha, while the second phase includes install-
count to Brent in order to cover the transport ing a 900-km pipeline in Jordan between Hadi-
and deviation in specifications, with Iraqi goods tha and Aqaba with a capacity of 1mn bpd. The
exported through the port of Aqaba receiv- latter will include a spur carrying 150,000 bpd to
ing preferential rates in return. This deal was the refinery at Zarqa.
‘reactivated’ in January, covering 10,000 bpd of With a gas line also planned to be built along
crude supplies as well as the implementation of the same route, total cross-border capacity is
a 300km dual-circuit electric antenna transmis- anticipated to be 1mn bpd of oil and 258mn
sion line that connects Jordan’s Risha conversion cubic feet (7.3mn cubic metres) per day of gas.™

Week 44 04•November•2021 www. NEWSBASE .com P13