Malaysia’s Petronas has issued two new engineering, procurement and construction (EPC) tenders for its second phase of development at the Gharraf oil field in the south of Iraq.

The prequalification process has been completed and sources close to the project expect contractors to submit bids in August for a new 170 million-cubic-feet-a-day (cf/d) gas treatment plant, and a central processing facility with three 55,000 barrel-a-day (b/d) production trains.

At least five international EPC firms are understood to have been invited to bid. These include:

• Chiyoda (Japan)
• JGC (Japan)
• Petrofac (UK)
• Samsung Engineering (South Korea)
• Saipem (Italy)

The front-end engineering and design (feed) work for the new facilities was completed by Switerland-based oil field services company Weatherford International in March.

Two trains are already under construction by Weatherford, and the three new trains will take the field’s total production capacity up to 230,000 b /d. Trains 3 and 4 and the new gas treatment plant are expected to be in operation by 2018 and Train 5 by 2020.

South Korea’s STX Heavy Industries was awarded a $99.5m deal in January to build the field’s first gas processing plant, which includes two 23 million cf/d plants to provide feedstock for a captive power plant.

The Gharraf field is operated by Petronas, in consortium with Japan Petroleum Exploration (Japex) and state-owned North Oil Company. Production began in September 2013 at 35,000 b/d, almost a year behind schedule.