Malaysia’s Petronas is prequalifying major international engineering, procurement and construction (EPC) firms ahead of a planned tender for a new central processing facility (CPF) at the Gharraf oil field in the south of Iraq.

The CPF tender is expected to be released in early 2014 and will cover an additional three production trains, according to sources close to the project.

A contract is also still to be awarded for the Gharraf field’s gas-to-power project, under which associated gas will be processed in two 23 million-cubic-feet-a-day (cf/d) plants to produce feedstock for a captive power plant. Bids were submitted in May for the scheme.

Petronas is developing the field in consortium with Japan Petroleum Exploration Company and state-owned North Oil Company, which agreed to raise production capacity to 230,000 barrels a day (b/d) by 2017.

US oil field services firm Weatherford International carried out the EPC for the first commercial production facilities at the field under a $200m contract signed in October 2011. The facilities consist of two crude production trains capable of producing a total of 100,000 b/d.

Petronas originally planned to start production of 35,000 b/d at the end of 2012, rising to 100,000 b/d in 2014. But the field only began pumping at the end of August.