OPEC member Kuwait has decided to extend for two years a consultancy contract it had signed with the UK’s Amec Foster Wheeler Company, now part of Wood Group, for its giant Clean Fuel Project (CFP), a local newspaper reported.
Wood Group had completed the acquisition of Amec Foster Wheeler in October 2017.
The Central Agency for Public Tenders has approved a request for the extension by the state-owned Kuwait National Petroleum Company (KNPC), the Arabic language daily Alanba said, citing ‘responsible’ oil sources.
KNPC’s decision to extend that contract for two years until September 2023 was because of a delay by key contractors in the execution of the CFP, the paper said.
The CFP was expected to be completed during the second quarter of 2018.
“KNPC has decided that those contractors must pay for the extension of the consultancy contract because they were late in abiding by the project’s completion date…the extension will start from September 24, 2021 until September 23, 2023,” the report said.
Foster Wheeler was awarded the CFP project management consultancy contract by KNPC in 2012.
CFP, which cost around 4.7 billion Kuwaiti dinars ($15.5 billion), is a major upgrade and expansion of the Mina Al-Ahmadi and Mina Abdullah Refineries to increase their combined throughput by 264,000 barrels per day to 800,000 bpd. It also included the construction of Al-Zour refinery in South Kuwait with an output capacity of 615,000 bpd.
