Two European companies, Spain’s Tecnicas Reunidas and Britain’s Petrofac, have been selected build the Fadhili gas plant in Saudi Arabia for Saudi Aramco, industry sources told Reuters.

The contracts are worth as much as $4.7 b but neither Tecnicas Reunidas, Petrofac, or Aramco responded to queries on this information.

The sources themselves insisted on remaining anonymous as the information is not public yet.

One source did say, however, that the two European companies “received notification last week; a letter of intent”.

The Spanish firm won the $2b bid for the gas processing unit, and for utilities and offsites for $1 b, while Petrofac won the package for sulphur recovery for $1.7b.

Italy’s Saipem and South Korea’s Daelim Industrial had previously been identified as bidders for the project, sources had previously told Reuters.

Petrofac shares rose to 0.7% once the news spread, said Digital Look, while Tecnicas shares were 0.1% higher too.

The Saudi move is widely seen as a confidence booster, evidence of financial solvency as Aramco can still make major investment plans despite the continuous fall in oil prices.

Saudi Arabia is also keen to switch increasing to gas from oil for electricity generation purposes.

The new plant is to have a processing capacity of 2.5 billion standard cubic feet per day (scfd) of sour gas and is split into three construction packages for the gas processing unit, utilities and offsite facilities such as nitrogen, steam, power and water systems, and sulphur recovery.