Zakum Development Company (Zadco) plans to tender construction contracts for its $500m-plus development of the offshore Satah oil field in the first quarter of 2010, a senior executive from the company says.

Front end engineering and design (Feed) studies for the scheme, to produce 25,000 barrels a day (b/d) of oil from the field, are due to be completed by the end of 2009, a source at the design contractor Australian/Malyasian joint venture Ranhill Worley Parsons tells MEED.

An invitation to bid on the engineering, procurement and construction contract to build offshore facilities and refit existing platforms will be sent out to prequalified contractors in early 2010, said Salah al-Bufalah, Zadco’s major projects manager, at the MEED Oil & Gas EPC (engineering, procurement and construction) 2009 conference in Abu Dhabi on 20 October.

A contract award is scheduled for the fourth quarter of 2010, and al-Bufalah says construction work will be completed by the fourth quarter of 2013.

The project is part of a wider scheme to boost production of the three fields Zadco operates to around 800,000 b/d by 2015. The company wants to produce 750,000 b/d from the Upper Zakum field by 2015, 25,000 from Satah and 70,000 from the smaller Umm al Dalkh reservoir.