Germany’s Siemens has won a €200mn ($230mn) contract for gas and steam turbines for installation in the Duqm Integrated Power and Water Project, which will be built to supply the planned 230,000 b/d Duqm refinery on the Arabian Sea coast of central Oman. State upstream firm Oman Oil Company (OOC), equal partner with Kuwait’s KPI in the DRPIC joint venture which is developing the refinery, signed a partnership agreement with Thailand’s Gulf Energy Development to build the power and desalination plant. The plant will have capacity to generate 326MW of electricity and desalinate 36,000 m3/d of water.
The $6-7bn refinery is expected to start up in 2023-24 after long delays before OOC’s former partner, now defunct Abu Dhabi investment house IPIC, exited the project (MEES, 31 August 2018). The refinery, initially proposed in the mid-2000s, broke ground last year but only secured the required $4.61bn of project finance recently (MEES, 9 November 2018). (CONTINUED - 155 WORDS)