The UK’s Wood Group has been awarded a contract to provide engineering services for Norwegian oil firm DNO International for its operations at the Tawke field in the north of Iraq.

Wood Group will provide engineering studies, detailed designs and technical and operational support for DNO’s expansion plans with a team of 30 engineers. The team will be based initially in Abu Dhabi before mobilising to work alongside DNO staff in Erbil.

The contract is Wood Group’s first in Iraq, but the company did not dislose its value in the announcement, which was made at the Abu Dhabi International Petroleum Exhibition and Conference (Adipec) on 12 November.

DNO is the operator of the Tawke production-sharing contract in the semi-autonomous Kurdistan region of Iraq, along with UK/Turkish joint venture Genel Energy. The Tawke field was discovered in 2006 and production began in 2007. Production capacity now stands at about 70,000 barrels a day (b/d) of oil. The partners hope to increase this to 100,000 b/d by the end of the year, and 200,000 b/d by 2014.

Since 2009, the field has been tied into Iraq’s northern oil export pipeline, which transports crude to the Turkish port of Ceyhan on the Mediterranean. It contributes a maximum of 100,000 b/d to Iraq’s exports, which in total average about 400,000 b/d.