Aramco launches Jizan refinery, bidders revise Rabigh offer
Saudi Aramco has invited bids for the construction of a new refinery in Jizan, an underdeveloped province bordering Yemen, industry sources said.
Aramco has also asked for revised offers for one of nine construction packages to expand the Rabigh petrochemical complex with Sumitomo Chemical, they said on Thursday.
The refinery in Jizan will have a capacity of 400,000 barrels per day and is far from oilfields on the Gulf coast.
Expected to be in operation in 2016, the refinery is part of plans by Aramco, increasingly looking to expand in downstream activities, to raise its domestic refining output capacity to 3.5 million bpd by 2016.
Bidding for the nine Jizan packages - including a hydrocracker, diesel hydrotreater, hydrogen production unit, crude distillation unit, vacuum distillation unit, and other units - was due to close mid-August, sources said.
Aramco and Sumitomo asked bidders to revise their proposals for a package called CP1 for cumene, phenol and cyclohexanone by May 30 with bidding validity due at the end of June.
The revision is due to the cancellation of the CP2 package for caprolactam and Nylon-6, as CP1 provides feedstock for the cancelled package.
South Korean group Daelim Industrial had submitted the lowest bids for CP1.
Sources said last week, British company Petrofac and South Korea group Engineering and Construction (006360.KS) were among contractors that will be part of building the second phase.
Video
Spot Lights
Ministers in Prime Minister Hisham Qandil's cabinet following the recent reshuffle (new appointees are in italics): 1. Minister of Agriculture Ahmed Mahmoud Ali El-Gizawi2. Minister of Antiquities Ahmed Eissa3. Minister of Aviation Wael Maadawi4. Minister of Communication Atef Helmy5. Minister of Culture
AP— April 15, 2013: Two bombs explode in the packed streets near the finish line of the Boston Marathon, killing three people and injuring more than 140.— January 17, 2011: A backpack bomb is placed along a Martin Luther King Day parade route in Spokane, Washington, meant to kill and injure participants in a civil rights march, but is found and disabled before it can explode. White
The convenient marriage between Iran and the Arab left would have been unthinkable only a few years ago, given the traditional ideological paradoxes between patriarchal Persian Shiism, on the one hand, and leftist orthodoxy on the other.Indeed, a casual viewer of Hizbullah's Al-Manar television, or the Iranian-funded Al-Mayadin TV, these days would probably think that the two Shia propaganda
"Abdullah's appointment was done via constitutional decree; it was a sovereign act by the head of the executive and therefore cannot be reversed by court ruling," said one leading FJP/Brotherhood figure. His comments echoed earlier assertions by Brotherhood lawyer Abdel-Moneim Abdel-Maksoud.The return of former prosecutor-general Mahmoud is "not going to happen," according to several government
