"The refinery of Shuaiba resumed full operations on November 17 after repairing a unit that was affected by fire," Hussein Ismail, head of the refinery, told a press conference. Shuaiba, the smallest of three refineries in oil-rich Kuwait, was shut down after the fire broke out in its heavy oil unit on November 4. The fire caused no casualties and the material damage was very limited, Ismail said. Most other units had resumed operations earlier, he added. Shuaiba together with the other two refineries of Al-Ahmadi and Mina Abdullah have a combined production capacity of 920,000 bpd. They are all run by state-owned Kuwait National Petroleum Company (KNPC). KNPC plans to upgrade the latter two at an estimated cost of three billion dollars and then shut down the ageing Shuaiba refinery. KNPC chairman Sami al-Rasheed told the news conference that the upgrade project was approved by the Supreme Petroleum Council last week and the company expects to invite bids by September next year. The project is expected to be completed by August 2011, he said. Kuwait also plans to build a state-of-the-art refinery with a capacity exceeding 600,000 bpd at a cost of 6.3 billion dollars. Eleven international oil companies have been prequalified for the project and tenders were invited earlier this year. The prequalified companies include Technip Italy, Foster Wheeler Italiana, and South Korea's GS Engineering and Construction Corp and SK Engineering and Construction Co. They also include Korean Hyundai Engineering and Construction Co., U.S. Stone and Webster International Inc. and United Arab Emirates-based Petrofac International Ltd. The refinery will be built in Al-Zour area, some 100 kilometers (60 miles) south of the capital near the border with Saudi Arabia. The companies were supposed to submit their offers by August this year, but the deadline has been extended several times and the final deadline now is early December. Accordingly, the process of awarding and signing the contracts has been delayed to next March, Rasheed said. It was not immediately known if this will have an impact on the construction of the refinery which was slated for completion by early 2010. After its completion, Kuwait will have a total refining capacity of around 1.4 million bpd. Kuwait sits on 10 percent of the world's oil reserves and currently produces 2.5 million bpd of crude oil. PIN/AFP