KUALA LUMPUR (May 18): New at helm, Petroliam Nasional Bhd's (Petronas) president and chief executive officer Datuk Wan Zulkiflee Wan Ariffin said that with the drop of crude oil prices, it is a "good time" to award engineering, procurement and construction (EPC) contracts for the national oil corporation's billion dollar Refinery and Petrochemical Integrated Development (Rapid) project in Pengerang, Johor.

Speaking at the 18th Asia Oil & Gas Conference 2015 (AOGC2015) CEO Strategic Dialogue session today, Wan Zulkiflee was posted a question by the audience on how the fall in oil prices have affected Petronas' Rapid project.

"Commodity prices went down, for us it was a good time to go into the market for EPC contracts because prices are acceptable," Wan Zul answered, adding that Petronas had also gone through a re-bidding process to get better prices for the project.

"So I think that would be the first impact for us in terms of low oil prices," he said.

Wan Zulkiflee also added that with the current environment, it has also enable Petronas to review the specifications of the project's facilities which in turn has helped the national oil corporation see some savings. Also as a result, he noted that Petronas has made the decision to take certain portions of the petrochemical plant within Rapid into phases.

"We have taken a decision that some of the chain (phases) in the petchem plant would be rephased. Basically some of the chains we will do a bit later."

"Of course the other thing is also that we reviewed the manning for the project management consultancy. We put in more of our guys because we had some resources we can deploy to Rapid and as a result we are less dependent on project management consultants, so now its an integrated team and we have filled up more of our people," he said.

He also added that Petronas has awarded all the infrastructure, the refinery and cracker packages to reputable EPC contractors. Meanwhile, its petrochemical plant is still under the tendering process.