Italy’s Eni has extended the deadline for bids for a deal to refurbish production facilities at Iraq’s Zubair field by more than a month to 31 August.

Eni issued two tenders earlier this year, covering construction of early production facilities and the refurbishment of the field’s existing facilities. Bids for the brownfield deal were originally due on 22 July, according to a source close to the scheme.

The field’s development plan includes the construction of five new degassing stations and revamping existing ones to cope with the increase in production. This is in addition to overhauling existing wells and repairing pipelines and production facilities. Some of the facilities at the field were first installed in the 1950s, when production first began.

Eni also plans to drill 42 new wells in 2011 and another 26 in 2012 as it seeks to increase output to 700,000 barrels a day (b/d) by 2013 from 270,000 b/d currently.

Italy’s Saipem is the engineering contractor for the deals.

The 4 billion-barrel Zubair oil field in southern Iraq is being developed by a consortium of Eni, the US’ Occidental Petroleum, South Korea’s Korea Gas Corporation and state-owned Missan Oil Company.

Production increased to more than 200,000 b/d in December from about 183,000 b/d. This enabled the group to begin recovering its capital and development costs from Iraq, earning $2 a barrel on the incremental oil production (MEED 24:7:11).