China Petroleum Engineering & Construction Corporation (CPECC) has formed a consortium with Italian contractor Progetti Europa & Global (PEG) to work on a project to expand the crude oil treatment capacity at Iraq’s Garraf oil field development, operated by Malaysia’s Petronas.

Project financing guarantees from Italian credit entities Sace Simest and Intesa Sanpaolo have helped PEG join CPECC on the engineering, procurement, construction and commissioning (EPCC) contract, worth $308m, Sace said in a statement.

Sace did not mention the amount of credit that has been made available to PEG, saying only that the contractor was provided project financing and insurance guarantees.

Petronas initially awarded the EPCC contract for the job to CPECC in December last year.

The consortium’s main scope of work is to add oil train numbers 3, 4 and 5 to upgrade the river water intake facility at the Garraf project, in order to boost its processing capacity.

According to regional projects tracker MEED Projects, construction works on the EPCC contract are under way, and the project is set to be completed in the last quarter of 2020.

Commissioning of the new oil processing trains is expected to add 30,000 barrels a day of capacity to the Garraf project.