Kuwait National Petroleum Co (KNPC) plans to invite bids by September for contracts worth a total of $3 billion for its new refinery, a report said.

The tender for the 615,000 barrel per day Al-Zour oil refinery will be open to local contractors, Al-Seyassah newspaper reported without disclosing the source of the information. KNPC could not be immediately reached for comment.

In May, KNPC awarded deals worth $8.4 billion to build the refinery, the Middle East's largest, to four South Korean firms and a Japanese company.

Kuwait has budgeted about $15 billion for the project. The refinery is scheduled to start operations in 2012, two years later than initially planned.

The world's seventh-largest oil exporter plans to boost refining capacity to 1.415 million bpd from 930,000 bpd with the new plant. - Reuters