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ALBUQUERQUE, N.M. (AP) — The clock is winding down for the federal government to decide whether to renew Lockheed Martin's contract to manage Sandia National Laboratories or hold a bidding competition to pick a corporate manager.

The Albuquerque Journal reports that the contract for the nuclear weapons lab expires at the end of September 2012, and records suggest that the federal government has run out of options to easily grant the company a one-year extension.

A joint venture of Boeing and Fluor has already gone public with its desire to bid on a Sandia contract. Other possible contenders are believed to be waiting in the wings.

Sandia National Laboratories is one of the nation's three nuclear weapons design and maintenance laboratories.

The most recent nuclear weapons lab bidding process — for the contract for Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory — took nearly 17 months. Before that, it took 18 months between the initial announcement of a bidding competition and implementation of the contract for Los Alamos National Laboratory. The current Sandia contract has less than 15 months until it ends.

A 2010 member written by federal officials said Lockheed Martin has done an outstanding job managing Sandia, which has earned it a series of single-year contract extensions, but "the terms of the management contract do not allow any further such extensions."

The National Nuclear Security Administration is running short of time to issue a call for bids.

There is recent precedent for the agency to grant what it called a "noncompetitive extension" of a major management contract. In 2010, the federal agency gave Honeywell Federal Manufacturing Technologies a five-year, no-bid extension to manage the Kansas City Plant, where nuclear weapon parts are made, under basically the same terms as its existing contract.

One widely discussed possibility is a one-year deal to keep Lockheed Martin as Sandia's manager to allow more time for a full contract competition.

Critics question the wisdom of a bidding process because of the results of the last two, in which consortia led by industrial giant Bechtel won management contracts for both Lawrence Livermore and Los Alamos.

In both cases, the new contracts have been substantially more expensive for taxpayers than Lockheed Martin's contract to manage Sandia.

The government paid the Bechtel team $46 million last year to manage Livermore, while the Los Alamos management team received $74 million.

Lockheed Martin, by comparison, received just $26 million to manage Sandia, despite receiving higher management performance ratings than the management teams at Los Alamos and Livermore.

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Information from: Albuquerque Journal, http://www.abqjournal.com