LONDON Royal Dutch/Shell has delayed announcing the winning bid for the full production facilities of the Soroush and Norouz offshore oil field project because of reported objections from the National Iranian Oil Company (NIOC), IRNA said.

The winning bid was by a partnership of the National Petroleum Construction Company (NPCC) of Abu Dhabi and The Hague Office of ABB Lummus Global, according to sources quoted by ***** Middle East Economic Digest.*****

The weekly suggested that the NPCC-led bid, sent to NIOC for approval in March, may not meet the minimum requirement of 30 percent local content and that shell may have to accede to NIOC's demand for a different subcontractor.

The other bidders for the facilities at the offshore fields, which are scheduled to start full production of 190,000 barrels a day in 2003, are said to include Hyundai heavy industries of South Korea and Technip of France.

Hyundai, working with France's Doris engineering and local Iranian company staff, was awarded the subcontract to build early production facilities last September. The first early production is ahead of schedule and said to be due in August this year.

Shell won the development contract, worth $810 million, to jointly upgrade the two offshore oil fields, Soroush and Norouz, in November 1999.