Gasco awards construction deals to Korean firms

Abu Dhabi: Abu Dhabi Gas Industries (Gasco) has closed two deals with South Korean construction companies.

South Korea's Hyun-dai Engineering and Construction said it had won a 2.03 trillion won (Dh6.24 billion) construction deal from the United Arab Emirates.

Hyundai said in a filing to the Korea Exchange that it had signed the deal with Gasco. The agreement includes plans to build sulphur storage and wastewater treatment facilities, according to the statement.

A second company, GS Engineering and Construction, said yesterday it had secured a 1.4 trillion won order from Gasco.

The order is part of a train project and will be completed by July 2013, GS said in a filing to the Korea Exchange.

Gasco is a joint venture between Abu Dhabi National Oil company (Adnoc), Shell, Total and Partex Oil and Gas.

The company is one of the biggest industrial complexes in the UAE and one of the largest gas processing companies in the world, with a process capability in excess of 5,300 million standard cubic feet of gas per day, producing 230,000 barrels of condensate, 4,700 tonnes of sulphur and over 20,000 tonnes of natural gas liquids per day.

Fertiliser plant

The two new contracts are following a recent order to South Korea by Ruwais Fertiliser Industries (Fertil), also a subsidiary of Adnoc.

Fertil said on Wednesday that it awarded Samsung Engineering a $1.2 billion (Dh4.4 billion) order to develop a fertiliser plant in Ruwais, 250 kilometres west of Abu Dhabi.

Ties between the UAE and South Korea got a boost when South Korean Prime Minister Han Seung-soo was on a three-day official visit to the UAE last June.

The UAE is South Korea's second largest oil source and tenth largest trade partner. Bilateral trade amounted to approximately $17 billion in 2008.

With inputs from Reuters