MEED magazine said the final contract has been put out to tender for a major project to treat contaminated soil, as part of the multi-billion dollar oil cleanup project, known as the Kuwait Environmental Remediation Programme.
The soil remediation project is the largest environmental remediation project in the world, and was set up by the United Nations Compensation Commission, to allow Kuwait to address the environmental damage caused by the 1990-1991 Gulf War, reports Al-Qabas daily.
The series of bids launched over recent years as part of the program allowed contractors to work in the country at a time when political instability did not mean much in the way of traditional upstream and downstream project activity.
The contracts deal with the claim of the United Nations Compensation Commission, and the claim relates to soil damage, including wet and dry oil lakes, as well as contaminated oil piles, as the area targeted by the program contracts includes 114 square kilometers of land contaminated with crude oil as a result of the destruction of nearly 700 oil wells in Kuwait.
The last contract, which will be floated under the program, is the re-vegetation contract, which will be implemented in the northern and southern regions of the country.
The contract was put forward in January, with a pre-tender meeting for the project being held the day after tomorrow, and the deadline for contractors to submit bids is 16 April.
Despite some speculation that the final project will have a large budget, the project budget is estimated at only $5 million, according to sources close to the Kuwait Oil Company, according to MEED.
“This project has asked for a big initial guarantee, which has led some contractors to believe that it will be a big budget contract, and although the fees are high, this is actually not a big budget contract, with a budget of about $5 million,” said one of the sources.
He added, “This is the last part of the United Nations budget for clean-up operations, and it is used to restore vegetation, as the project will repopulate many areas in Kuwait with local plants.”
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