South Korea’s Samsung Engineering has been awarded a contract by Abu Dhabi Gas Industries (Gasco) to construct a nitrogen gas injection facility at Habshan in Abu Dhabi.

The contractor had been frontrunner among the eleven international bidders with a bid worth $160m.

The project intends to maintain production levels by pumping nitrogen into the field to augment declining reservoir pressure. Pressure on depleting oil fields is usually maintained through water and gas, and Habshan it is one of the first projects to use an alternative method for enhanced oil recovery (EOR) in the Middle East.

The nitrogen injection system at Habshan will have the capacity to pump 670,000 cubic metres an hour of nitrogen into the field. It includes a carbon dioxide recovery system that captures the CO2 for reinjection and for use as an industrial gas.

Gasco repeatedly delayed bid deadlines over technical specifications for the requisite compressors. The problems related to the high initial energy consumption when the compressors are started up and vendors were at first unable to supply compressors that could perform a less energy intensive slow start.

“They wanted a soft start, which [the vendors] couldn’t supply in the beginning,” says the source. The final deadline for commercial bids was 25 July.

The nitrogen will be produced by Elixier, a joint venture of Germany’s Linde and Abu Dhabi National Oil Company (Adnoc). Elixier will begin production at its site in Mirfa this year.

Gasco is also looking to utilise carbon dioxide for EOR and has already tendered its first scheme using the gas. the company had to return bid bonds and will launch a new tender, as the project suffered its own compressor problems. Oil field operator Abu Dhabi Company for Onshore Operations (Adco) insisted on larger compressors than the one suggested by Gasco, thus changing the scope of other parts of the project. The new tender is expected by the beginning of 2012.