OPEC member Kuwait will soon award contracts for the supply of more than 1,000 oil well pumps within ongoing plans to expand its crude output capacity, a local newspaper reported on Tuesday. 

The US Schlumberger and Weatherford  companies are vying for the deals along with  Spetco International Petroleum, the Contracting and Marine Services and HOT Engineering & Construction companies of  Kuwait, the Arabic language daily Alanba said. 

The state-owned Kuwait Oil Company (KOC), which is in charge of the Gulf Emirate’s upstream sector, is “putting the finishing touches” for the award of the contracts that could include at least one bidder, the paper said. 

Schlumberger has submitted a bid of around 129.8 million Kuwaiti dinars ($428.3 million) while Weatheford’s bid is worth nearly 136.5 million dinars ($450.45 million), it said. 

The bid submitted by Spetco is worth nearly 117.2 million dinars ($386.7 million), while the Contracting and Marine Services, and HOT submitted bids with a value of 117.7 million ($388.4 million) and 146.5 million dinars  (483.4 million) respectively. 

According to the report, the value of bids were “massively revised down” following a series of meetings between KOC and the bidders from around 698.3 million dinars ($2.83 billion), the highest bid initially submitted by Schlumberger. 

The paper did not mention reasons for that decline nor did it provide dates for the signing of the  contract. 

(Writing by Nadim Kawach; Editing by Anoop Menon)

(anoop.menon@lseg.com)