Uruguay’s Gas Sayago plans to name pre-qualified bidders to build and operate the country’s first LNG terminal in the next two weeks.The company is checking out 12 international players that handed in initial documentation by this week’s deadline.A Gas Sagayo source declined to identify the bidders but said: “What I can tell you is that they are all first-class companies.” The joint venture of Uruguayan state-controlled energy outfits Ancap and UTE is planning to build a regasification terminal at Punta Sayago, about four kilometers west of the port of Montevideo (pictured).Bidders will submit proposals that involve either a floating storage and regasification unit or a combination of a floating storage unit with platform-based regasification kit.The 10 million cubic metres per day terminal will be expandable to 15 MMcmd. Also at stake is a 15-year agreement under an umbrella build, own, operate and transfer (BOOT) contract.Gas Sayago is hoping to receive final bids in the fourth week of December and declare a winner by early 2013.The project has spent the last several months on a steady course, after facing repeated delays, with targets for a late 2014 to early 2015 start-up.The current tender process finally got under way in August after Gas Sayago was forced to relocate the proposed terminal because would-be suppliers expressed concerns with the previous site in more exposed waters of the River Plate.Gas Sayago is pursuing the terminal project without the previously expected help of Argentina but the neighbouring country is still expected to be a customer for the terminal’s output.