South Korea's Samsung Engineering won a contract worth $1.2 billion to modernise Algeria's biggest refinery, reports Reuters.

The engineering firm will complete rehabilitation and modernisation works at the refinery in the Mediterranean port of Skikda within 36 months, Algerian state energy group Sonatrach said.

The works will help increase the refinery's capacity by 10% to 16.6 million tonnes per year from its current level of 15 million tonnes.

Algeria aims to bring its refining capacity to 45 million tonnes by 2014 from the current 25 million tonnes.