Russia’s Lukoil has invited international engineering, procurement and construction (EPC) firms to bid for the construction of an oil gathering system at the West Qurna Phase-2 oil field in the south of Iraq,

Tendered at the end of December, the Russian company has set a deadline of 3 February for proposals, sources close to the project tell MEED.

Work on the scheme includes well pads and gathering pipelines that will take the crude to the manifold system of the West Qurna-2 field’s central processing facility (CPF). It also includes well testing units and power connections.

The new facilities are designed to be built and brought onstream in two phases. Phase 1 covers the construction of well pad-2, which will gather oil from four wells, and a single well at the WQ-11 well pad. This is expected to be completed by the end of November 2013.

Phase 2 is to be completed by April 2014 and covers 13 wells across three well pads. A third phase, which has not been included in the scope, will add another 27 wells to the system.

The construction of the gathering system and well pads will be managed by Australia’s WorleyParsons, which was awarded an $82m deal in November last year to support Lukoil’s EPC activities as the company increases production at the field to 1.8 million barrels a day (b/d).