Interested firms have until 27 November to submit bids for the project, which calls for the construction of stations with total capacity of 200 million cubic feet a day, to compress gas received from West Qurna DS stations 6, 7 and 8 before it enters the NGL plant.

The tender is part of a wider project to modernise and expand the West Qurna field. Another recent tender, also issued by SCOP, has invited companies to submit bids by 13 November to design, supply and build a 91-kilometre-long, 132-kV transmission line between West Qurna and Basra. The project also calls for the installation of an associated telecommunications system. SCOP issued various other tenders for the field earlier in the summer (MEED 30:7:04).

West Qurna has a design capacity of about 650,000 barrels a day (b/d) of oil, but present output is just over half that, at 350,000 b/d.