State Company for Oil Projects (SCOP)has invited companies to bid by 10 September for various contracts to supply equipment for the West Qurna oil field. The biggest tender is for the supply of a 5,000-cubic-metre-capacity flow tank to serve the DS6 West Qurna degassing station.

SCOP has also invited companies to bid for contracts to supply pumps, valves and metering equipment for the degassing station, which is one of three located in the field. The contracts are understood to form the first phase of a comprehensive upgrade planned for the field.

The 650,000-barrel-a-day (b/d) West Qurna field is the subject of a contractual dispute between Russia's Lukoiland Baghdad. Lukoil claims it has a valid contract signed in the early 1990s with Saddam Hussein's former regime to develop the field. But state-owned South Oil Company (SOC)put the field into production in 1996, claiming the Russian company had failed to mobilise on the project. SOC has drilled 47 wells in the field, which has present production capacity of about 350,000 b/d of oil (MEED 12:3:04, Cover Story).