Iraq’s cabinet has approved a $449m engineering, procurement and construction (EPC) deal with South Korea’s STX Heavy Industries for the construction of pipelines at the Akkas field in the western Anbar province.

Approved on 12 November, the project covers new natural gas and product pipelines from the field to two nearby power stations.

Three pipelines will carry condensates, liquid petroleum gas (LPG) and dry gas from the Akkas field’s central processing facility (CPF), which is under construction by Daewoo Engineering & Construction, another South Korean firm.

The pipelines will first go to the T-1 pumping, 40 kilometres from the CPF, before splitting with dry gas going to the Akkas power plant. Two other pipelines will also be sent to the K-3 pumping station, where they will split again, with a dry gas pipeline crossing the Euphrates river to the planned Al-Anbar Heet power plant and an LPG pipeline going to a bottling plant at Ramadi. The total length of the pipelines is approximately 582km. Diameters range from 6 to 26-inches.

Daewoo is due to complete the first phase of the 400 million cubic-feet-a-day (cf/d) CPF by the end of 2015, with additional production trains by the end of 2017.  The pipelines are expected to be completed within 47 months.

The Akkas gas field is being developed by Korea Gas Corporation (Kogas) and state-owned North Oil Company under a production services contract awarded in October 2011.