The Ministry has already indicated through its website devoted to this project (www.JazanRefinery.com) that the Request for Proposals (RFP) was issued on the sixth of Ramadan 1429 H., corresponding to 6/9/2008 and has specified March 7th, 2008 as the deadline to receive the Applicants' proposals. The successful applicant for this project will be announced by the end of the second quarter of 2009.

While there is some inaccuracy in the media reports that reported additional delays in the project construction dates, the schedule issued to Applicants in the RFP states that the detailed design of the project shall be completed no later than 18 months from the license award date, MinPet stated. Commensurably, the Project is expected to proceed in completing the necessary financing activities, after which the completion of construction shall be executed no later than 48 months, or four years.

The milestones and schedule detailed in the RFP put a target date for the commercial operation of the Refinery in the first quarter of 2015. It should be noted that a detailed request for proposals (RFP) contained a number of incentives for investors to build the refinery in Jazan that can reach a processing capacity of 250,000 to 400,000 barrels per day.