A Kuwaiti and Saudi joint venture is close to awarding contracts to recover gas from their shared Hout oilfield, with US-based McDermott International and South Korea's Daewoo Engineering the lowest bidders, industry sources said. The Al-Khafji Joint Operations Co (KJO) - set up by state oil firm Saudi Aramco and Kuwait Petroleum Corp (KPC) - could announce the winning bids in about two weeks. Prospective contractors were given the option to submit combined offshore and onshore project proposals and France's Technip submitted the lowest combined bid, sources said. The individual proposals submitted for the onshore and offshore parts of the project by McDermott and Daewoo were lower than the combined Technip bid. But two sources said KJO would have to bear the additional cost of managing the two projects if it picks two contractors. The winning firms are expected to build offshore gas gathering facilities, a subsea pipeline to carry 48 million cubic feet of gas per day, and onshore gas facilities. India's Larsen and Toubro, Italy's Saipem, CCC and UAE's NPCC, GS Samsung Engineering were among firms invited to bid.
