Sept. 16 (Bloomberg) -- United Group Ltd. said it is among companies that will pursue about A$1.5 billion ($1.3 billion) of engineering and building work at Australian liquefied natural gas projects as the Gorgon partners and others award contracts.

“We’ve registered our interest, but there is more than one company keen to secure that kind of work,” Richard Leupen, chief executive officer of the Sydney-based engineering and property services company, said today. United Group won a A$230 million contract in April for Woodside Petroleum Ltd.’s Pluto LNG venture. Both Pluto and Gorgon are in Western Australia.

Companies in the engineering and construction industries are jockeying for position now that Chevron Corp., Exxon Mobil Corp. and Royal Dutch Shell Plc have agreed to build Gorgon. The A$43 billion project, one of at least 10 planned Australian LNG ventures, is set to allocate A$10 billion in contracts, Roy Krzywosinski, Chevron’s local managing director, said Sept. 14.

“It’s not the biggest opportunity we’ve had, but it’s certainly one of the bigger ones we’ve seen,” Leupen said. The contracts the company is interested in may be more than a year from being awarded, he said.

United Group has doubled in Sydney trading in the last six months. It was at A$15.21 at 2:34 p.m., valuing the company at about A$2.5 billion.

Australian engineering company Clough Ltd. is part of a group led by Houston-based KBR Inc. awarded a A$2.7 billion contract, the Perth-based company said yesterday. Clough’s 20 percent share of the contract is worth about A$540 million.

United Group expects revenue to be “flat” for the 12 months through next June after a gain of about 37 percent in the latest year, said Leupen. The value of all the company’s contracts approaches A$10 billion, a “pretty healthy order book,” he said.

To contact the reporter on this story: James Paton in Sydney jpaton4@bloomberg.net.

Last Updated: September 16, 2009 00:56 EDT