Privately owned Kuwait Energy Company (KEC) will soon tender its first engineering, procurement and construction (EPC) contracts at the Siba gas field in the south of Iraq, having prequalified a number of Iraqi firms for the construction of gas pipelines.

Prequalification was completed in mid-March and tenders are expected to be released shortly, according to a source close to the project.

Kuwait Energy plans to tender three pipelines. The first is a 20-inch, 38-kilometre dry gas pipeline with a capacity of 110 million cubic feet a day (cf/d). The second is for a 4-inch, 380-km liquid petroleum gas (LPG) pipeline to run in parallel to the dry gas line. The final pipeline will be a 6-inch, 12-kilometre line carrying 17,500 barrels a day (b/d) of condensates.

The company plans to eventually tender an 18-inch, 100-km pipeline to connect the planned gas processing facility to export faciltiies.

The 1.5 trillion cubic feet Siba field is operated by Kuwait Energy Iraq, a subsidiary of KEC in partnership with Turkish Petroleum Overseas (TPAO) and state-owned Missan Oil Company. The consortium signed a gas development and production service contract with the Oil Ministry in late-2010 to produce 100 million cf/d of sales gas.

Kuwait Energy is developing the field in phases, starting with an initial early production facility (EPF), followed by a full production facility.

The EPF will include:

• A gathering system to tie-in the available production wells
• A central gas processing plant (CPF) with a minimum capacity of 55 million cf/d
• An export pipeline system for dry sales gas, liquid petroleum gas (LPG) and condensates

The full production facilities will include:

• The completion of the gathering system to connect new, existing and future wells to the CPF
• Expansion of the CPF to 100 million cf/d

S2V, a subsidiary of UK engineering firm Amec has been appointed for the concept development of the Siba surface facilities. The company completed studies in early 2013 and will now manage the development.