Abu Dhabi Company for Onshore Petroleum Operations (Adco) has further extended the deadline for the submission of commercial bids for a key engineering, procurement and construction contract, involving its $2 billion-plus Bab integrated facilities oilfield project.

Sources close to the tender process said Adco recently pushed back the project’s bid submission deadline to 18 June.

“We were hoping to submit commercial offers for the Bab project in May, but Adco extended the submission deadline by almost three weeks,” one source said.

Technical offers for the Bab engineering, procurement and construction project were submitted by six contractors or consortia in March, but the commercial submissions have been delayed by the Abu Dhabi state-owned giant on a few occasions.

Bab is the largest EPC onshore project to be offered by Adco this year and industry sources have suggested that the state-owned giant is unlikely to further delay its tender process.

“The Bab oilfield development is a strategic project for Abu Dhabi and is likely to be awarded within a month or two, without any further delay,” a source argued.

This year, Adco revived the much-awaited onshore oil project in a slimmed-down format, after reworking its front-end engineering and design internally.

Those believed to have submitted technical bids include Italy’s Saipem, China Petroleum Engineering & Construction Corporation (CPECC), Spanish contractor Tecnicas Reunidas, UK-listed Petrofac, a consortium involving Abu Dhabi’s National Petroleum Construction Company (NPCC) and Japan’s JGC, and another group comprising Spain’s Intecsa Industrial with South Korea’s SK E&C.

Adco’s parent company, Abu Dhabi National Oil Company (Adnoc), had stalled the original Bab tender process in 2015 and did not award an EPC contract to Intecsa, which originally emerged as the lowest bidder for the job.

Adnoc wanted to reduce costs for the project and believed Intecsa’s price offer of more than $3 billion in the previous tender was too high, sources said.

One source suggested that the Intecsa-led consortium as the initial front-runner for the new version of the project, considering the Spanish contractor was the low bidder in the previous tender.

The Bab integrated facilities job aims to increase the large field's production capacity by nearly 10%. 

The work-scope covers surface facilities required at the Thamama-A, Thamama-H and Thamama-B (Updip and Attic) fields which are designed to help achieve a total sustainable oil production rate of 450,000 barrels per day by 2019.

The integrated facilities project will include a well fluid gathering system comprising well bays, flowlines, manifolds as well as other associated hardware and equipment.

It also includes another processing train with a 176,000-bpd liquids capacity in the existing Bab central degassing station with associated facilities.

The Bab field is located about 150 kilometres from the city of Abu Dhabi and is the second largest onshore oilfield in the emirate, covering more than 1200 square kilometres.

Adco is majority-owned by Adnoc, which has a 60% stake. The remaining stakes are held by BP, Total, Japan's Jodco, GS Energy of Korea, China National Petroleum Corporation and China's CEFC.