“We believe that in the second half of the year we will be very busy in bidding,” said Imad Shanan, senior vice president and general operations for the Saudi operations of Petrofac Engineering and Construction Ventures.
“The EPC (Engineering, Procurement, Construction) market did not recover yet (from the 2008 financial crisis). We expect that next year probably reasonable size of business will be available or awarded in Saudi,” Shanan said on the sidelines of a MEED conference.
Shanan said his company was not concerned by competition from South Korean companies who have won several EPC deals in the Saudi market over the past couple of years.
“We are not concerned at all...We can see that the South Koreans are bidding very aggressively but I think the market always will correct itself,” he said.
Saudi Aramco has awarded 39 contracts to South Korean companies worth $11.5 billion in the last five years, its chief executive, Khalid Al-Falih, said recently.
Petrofac is carrying out EPC work for the utilities and cogeneration package for the development of Saudi Aramco’s first non-associated gas field Karan, which will have a capacity to process 1.8 billion cfd once completed.
Shanan declined to say when the project was due to be completed but said .”..we are doing well (on Karan).”
Aramco had said it expected to start producing 450 million cubic feet per day of gas from the first phase of the Karan project by mid-2011.
