Gas pipeline expected to be completed by year end, no new extensions needed

This news has been read 12879 times!

KUWAIT CITY, Sept 8: The Kuwait Oil Company’s $480 million gas pipeline, connecting northern Kuwait with the Mina Al-Ahmadi refinery, is expected to be completed before the end of the year, reports Al-Qabas daily. An oil source told MEED, “The project is expected to be mechanically completed and to start before the end of the year, as the Kuwait Oil Company has already extended the time available to the contractor to complete the project, but it is not expected that there will be more time extensions needed.”

India’s Larsen & Toubro was awarded the contract in April 2019. Since then, gas pipelines have become a strategic priority for the GCC. So far this year, nearly $8 billion in contracts have been awarded, up from $755 million in 2019, according to regional project tracker Med Projects. Earlier this year, the KOC obtained approval from the Central Agency for Public Tenders to extend the contract for approximately 240 days until December 26, 2022.

Facilities
The project includes the construction of a 145-kilometre gas pipeline and associated facilities to supply the Mina Al Ahmadi Refinery gas from fields of northern Kuwait. The engineering and design (feeding) work for the project was carried out by UK-based Wood Group, and French company TechnipFMC is the project management consultant, but the project was delayed due to disruption caused by the Corona pandemic in the last quarter of 2021 and early 2022.

Prior to these delays, the project was on track to start operating in mid- November and complete by February 2022. In October last year, before the latest delays, MEED reported that the project was on track to start operating in mid-November and complete by February 2022. After delays at the end of 2021 and the beginning of 2022, sources said the project won’t be operational until sometime in 2023 at the earliest, but project implementation has seen significantly less disruption in recent months, and stakeholders are now more optimistic.

This news has been read 12879 times!