Kuwait's $15 bln budget for new refinery unchanged

By Rania El Gamal and Ulf Laessing

KUWAIT, May 12 (Reuters) - Kuwait said the budget for building its al-Zour refinery complex remained unchanged at 4 billion dinars ($15 billion), after awarding $8.4 billion of contracts to four South Korean firms and one Japanese.

"There are other expenses such as supervision, procurement, material and construction (PMC) costs, and licence costs," Assad al-Saad, deputy chairman of state refiner Kuwait National Petroleum Co (KNPC), told Reuters on Monday.

A $2 billion engineering, procurement and construction (EPC) contract for the 615,000 barrels per day (bpd) complex remains to be awarded, Saad said. U.S. engineering firm Fluor Corp (FLR.N: Quote, Profile, Research) is al-Zour's project manager and will oversee the award of the EPC contract.

KNPC on Sunday awarded a package worth $4 billion to build crude distillation units to a combination of Japan's JGC Corp (1963.T: Quote, Profile, Research), and South Korea's GS Engineering and Construction Corp (006360.KS: Quote, Profile, Research). [ID:nL11258868]

A $2 billion contract went to South Korea's SK Energy 096770.SK to build a hydrogen production unit, while Daelim Industrial (000210.KS: Quote, Profile, Research) won a $1.2 billion contract to set up storage tanks.

"The $8.4 billion is just an initial estimate," independent Kuwaiti oil analyst Kamel al-Harmi said. "It will go up when they build the refinery."

Hyundai Engineering & Construction (000720.KS: Quote, Profile, Research) won a $1.1 billion deal for marine export facilities, while another project was won Fluor, KNPC said, without giving its value.

"There is a tender that we did not float until now which is the utility and offsite ... it is about $2 billion," he said.