Italy’s Eni and Malaysia’s Petronas have extended the bid deadlines for two separate engineering, procurement and construction (EPC) deals at the Zubair and Gharaff fields in the south of Iraq.

Bids for Eni’s new water treatment facility are now due to be submitted on 17 February, instead of the originally planned 31 January deadline when the deal was launched in November 2012, sources close to the project tell MEED.

The plant will initially treat 400,000 barrels a day (b/d) of water, with the possibility of expansion up to 800,000 b/d to support water injection into the Zubair field.

Separately, Malaysia’s Petronas pushed back the deadline for bids on a gas-fired power plant construction contract to the middle of March, also from 31 January. The 120MW captive power plant is intended to provide power for use in upstream activities at the field by the end of 2014.

Contractors in Iraq had expected to see another Petronas deal, for the gas-processing plant, which will supply the feedstock for the power plant launched in October last year. The US’ Weatherford International completed the front-end engineering and design (feed) for the plant in November, but there is still no sign of when it will be tendered.

The Zubair field is operated by a consortium of Italy’s Eni, along with US oil firm Occidental Petroleum, South Korea’s Kogas and state-owned South Oil Company. The Gharraf field is under development by Petronas and Japan’s Japex.