US oil major, ExxonMobil has invited international engineering and construction firms to express interest in a deal to build a water treatment facility at the West Qurna Phase-One oil field in the south of Iraq.

The project is being managed by US engineering firm, Fluor and a tender is expected to be launched in before the end of the year, according to a source close to the project.

The Produced Water Treatment Project is aimed at processing effluent water to meet water injection standards at the field. Iraq’s producing oil fields all contain a processing complex, known as a degassing station, to remove salt, water, associated gas and particulates from the crude before it is transported.

Pre-treatment facilities with a capacity of 30,000 barrels a day (b/d) will be built at three existing degassing stations (DS-6, DS-7 and DS-8) at the West Qurna-1 field. These will include pre-separator tanks, capable of holding 1,200 cubic meters, pre-treated water transfer pumps and recovered oil pumps.

A new centralised 90,000 b/d produced water treatment facility will be located at DS-7. It will treat water produced at all three stations, removing oil and suspended solids.

It will consist of a single 2,400 cubic meter produced water tank, a produced-water transfer pump, two treated-produced-water transfer pumps, two gas-induction pumps, two gas-flotation units on skids with a capacity of 45,000 b/d and two skid mounted cartridge filters.

Until March this year, ExxonMobil was leading the development of a giant seawater treatment facility which is intended to produce as much as 4 million b/d of treated seawater from the Gulf in its first phase. The Oil Ministry initially hoped it would be completed by 2015, but with no design deals awarded yet, this deadline is looking unlikely.