Having earlier received bids from some six firms to provide the front-end engineering and design (FEED) package and project-management consultancy services for the 400,000-barrel/day (b/d) Jizan refinery (January 2010, Economic performance), Saudi Aramco, the state oil company, has selected KBR of the US for the four-year contract. The overall project will cost some US$7bn. The Jizan refinery was initially planned to become the first privately owned oil refinery in Saudi Arabia. However, owing to a lack of interest from international oil companies, Aramco took over the project in February 2010.

In another major advance in the country's refinery plans, a FEED contract to expand the Yanbu refinery has been agreed between Saudi Aramco, the Lubricating Oil Refining Company (Luberef-a 70-30 joint venture between Aramco and ExxonMobil of the US) and Jacobs of the US. Among other things, the expansion will allow the refinery to produce high-quality type-three oil, used by luxury cars. The total cost of the project will be around US$1bn. Aramco has also intensified talks with Sinopec of China with an offer to fill in the void created after Houston-based ConocoPhillips withdrew from the 400,000-b/d Yanbu export-refinery project, citing commercial reasons (May 2010, Economic performance). Sinopec is one of the three Asian companies with whom Aramco has held negotiations in the recent past. The two others are Reliance Industries and Hindustan Petroleum Corporation Limited, both of India. The estimated US$10bn project, which is intended to refine heavy crude, has been on the drawing board for over five years.