CHINA'S Offshore Oil Engineering Company (COOEC) has emerged as the preferred bidder to supply a newbuild cylindrical floating production, storage and offloading vessel for CNOOC Ltd's Liuhua 11-1 and Liuhua 1-4 oil complex in the Pearl River Mouth basin. This would be the first use of a cylindrical FPSO in the South China Sea. Well-placed industry sources said COOEC is favoured, even though its commercial offer is more than 10% higher than those offered by Cosco Shipping Heavy Industry and CIMC Raffles. Sources said COOEC offered slightly more than 1 billion yuan ($154 million), while Cosco offered 883 million yuan and CIMC Raffles 885 million yuan. However, Cosco is not the preferred bidder, according to one source, because CNOOC Ltd's new contracting strategy is to evaluate the overall proposals, in which price accounts for only 50% of the bid evaluation. All the offers are higher than CNOOC Ltd's budget, so the operator offered the deal to COOEC, its sister company under the umbrella of China National Offshore Oil Corporation.
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