By Jane Han
Staff Reporter

GS Engineering & Construction said Thursday it had locked in a $3.1 billion order to expand an oil refinery in the United Arab Emirates (UAE), the biggest plant order ever awarded to a single South Korean builder.

Under the deal with Takreer, a unit of the Abu Dhabi National Oil Company (ADNOC), GS E&C will add a plant to the crude oil refinery facilities in Ruwais, about 250 kilometers west of Abu Dhabi, by January 2014, company officials said.

The latest order comes on top of an earlier deal that the Korean builder struck with Abu Dhabi Gas Industries (GASCO) last week to build a $1.2 billion gas plant in Ruwais.

It is also an addition to the string of fresh orders local construction firms have been winning from Abu Dhabi, capital of the UAE, the world's fourth-largest OPEC oil producer, in the wake of a recovery in oil prices.

SK Engineering & Construction said Wednesday it had won a $2.1 billion plant order from Abu Dhabi to expand the Ruwais oil refinery - the same facility that GS E&C has been commissioned to improve.

The two contracts together aim to hike the site's crude oil refining capacity by 417,000 barrels per day, according to ADNOC.

Separately, Samsung Engineering last week won a $1.2 billion fertilizer plant project from Fertil, a unit of ADNOC, while Hyundai Engineering & Construction also won a $1.72 billion deal from GASCO to build sulphur storage and wastewater treatment facilities.

Earlier in the year, STX Construction won a $180 million deal for the Nurai Island Development Project, a mega maritime resort complex in Abu Dhabi, which was one of the first large-scale orders secured by Korean firms since their overseas plant construction started to pick up again.

"Local builders saw a sudden drop in orders in the second half of last year as many oil-rich countries in the Middle East began holding off or canceling projects," said an official at the International Contractors Association of Korea.

However, he said that a rebound in oil prices and hopes for a general recovery in the global economy are going to encourage major refiners to improve and expand their facilities.

jhan@koreatimes.co.kr