UAE-based engineering firm Dodsal is the frontrunner to win an estimated $100m contract to build a gas pipeline in Abu Dhabi after submitting the lowest bid for the deal, according to other bidders.

Four international engineering firms submitted commercial bids for the project on 15 November. The winner will build a 100-kilometre-long pipeline linking Abu Dhabi Gas Industries’ (Gasco) facilities in the northeast and southwest of the emirate.

“They opened the bids yesterday [17 November] and Dodsal was the lowest,” says a senior executive at one of the other firms that bid for the job.

Two other executives from bidding companies confirm that Dodsal is the low bidder.

The contractors did not know how much Dodsal bid. However, sources close to Gasco say Dodsal bid 10-20 per cent less than the next lowest bidder.

If it is successful, Dodsal will replace the existing 36-inch pipeline that carries ethane and methane-rich lean gas from Gasco’s Thamma C production facilities in the northeast to the state-owned firm’s Asab facilities in the southwest.

The project is part of a $1bn-plus scheme to improve the gas production, processing and distribution infrastructure at the Asab, Bab, Bu Hasa and Ruwais (ABBR) fields by 150 million cubic feet a day.

France’s Technip won a $480m contract to build a gas compressor at Asab as part of the ABBR project on 16 November.