KUWAIT has moved a step closer to building the nation’s largest refinery at a cost of at least KD4 billion ($14.5 billion), reviving a project that stalled two years ago following political opposition.

The Supreme Petroleum Council (SPC), the emirate’s highest decision-making body for oil policy, has approved the construction of the 615,000-barrels-per-day Al Zour facility along with a project to upgrade two of the country’s three existing refineries, Mina Al Ahmadi and Mina Abdulla, so that they can produce cleaner burning fuels.

Construction contracts for the Al Zour project, which will be the Gulf nation’s biggest oil refinery, were awarded in May 2008 to JGC Corporation of Japan and to South Korea’s GS Engineering and Construction Corporation, SK Engineering and Construction Company, Daelim Industrial Company and Hyundai Engineering and Construction Company. Fluor Corporation, based in Irving, Texas, won a consulting contract. The initial plan called for the refinery to start operating by 2012.

The facility may be established as a public shareholding company to expand the role of private investors in the country’s economic development.