MEED magazine has reported that the Kuwait Oil Company has asked the Central Agency for Public Tenders to resume discussions on the second phase of the negotiation process for the pricing of a consultancy services contract for the management of a major project in the oil sector.
In this context, a local Arabic daily quoting sources from the magazine stated that the bids for the contract submitted by the American multinational engineering and construction Fluor Corporation and the French “Technip” have initially been rejected.
In the meantime, the Kuwait Oil Company has accepted three offer submitted by the American KBR company, (88.41 million dinars), British company “Wood Group”, ( 83.46 million dinars) and the Australian company “Worley” (81.3 million dinars).
The magazine had reported last February that the French company Technip had returned to competition for the project, while “Fluor” did not participate in the bidding process.
MEED noted that the Cabinet’s Grievances Committee had requested a copy of documents and information related to a complaint filed by the “Fluor” company regarding its continued exclusion.
The Central Agency for Public Tenders had initially excluded the Fluor and Technip from bidding for their failure to adjust the value of the letter of guarantee from 2.5 million dinars to 2.65 million dinars. After that, the two companies submitted a complaint to the Grievance Committee of the Council of Ministers, claiming that it had not been informed of the amendments to the tender specifications.
It was not possible for MEED to know the reasons why Technip only was allowed to participate in the bidding process although both companies had filed complaints.
On the other hand, the contracts are valued at about $330 million and cover a period of between three and five years. The delay in awarding the consultancy contract for the project caused major disruption to the oil and gas projects market in Kuwait.
Over the past few years, there have been few announcements of major projects in the oil and gas sector in Kuwait, while the impact of the Corona pandemic and the global energy transition has been compounded by the ongoing issues related to the internal political situation in Kuwait.