Lukoil lets West Qurna-2 development contracts

Lukoil Mid-East Ltd., operator of the West Qurna-2 oilfield development megaproject in southern Iraq, has signed several major contracts.

Lukoil plans to start early production of 500,000 b/d of oil in 2013-14 from West Qurna, Andrey Kuzyaev, president, Lukoil Overseas Holding Ltd., told the CERAWeek conference in Houston earlier this month. Kuzyaev noted that Lukoil already produces 220,000 b/d outside Russia, where 10% of the company’s production and 12% of its reserves reside.

Iraq, Uzbekistan, and West Africa, Kuzyaev said, are the three pillars of growth by which Lukoil plans to hike its production outside Russia to 500,000-600,000 b/d in 5-10 years. West Qurna, he said, is the world’s largest undeveloped oil field with 13 billion bbl in a small area.

One contract gives Samsung Engineering of Korea 29 months to design five well pads with 67 development wells, five gathering lines, a central processing facility (CPF), Euphrates river water intake and water pipeline to the CPF, a power supply system, and field camp.

The Samsung contract also covers utilities for water treatment, distribution, and disposal (including formation water), fuel gas extraction, instruments, drainage systems, commercial oil storage tanks, and pumping facilities, administration buildings, workshops, warehouses, chemical analytical laboratory, fire station, central control room, and other facilities.

Lukoil let a contract to ENKA Insaat of Turkey for construction of the gas turbine power plant.

The power plant includes three dual-fuel industrial gas turbines by General Electric of 42 Mw each, gas treatment unit with gas compressors, a diesel fuel loading, storage, and distribution system with two tanks 2,500 cu m each, power distribution system with step-up, step-down, and auxiliary transformers and switch gears, diesel generator, control room, utility, and infrastructure installations. Completion is to take 27 months.

Entrepose Projets/Rosco of France and Jordan were contracted for extension of the existing tank farm at the Tuba oil export terminal, namely construction of three 66,000 cu m oil storage tanks as well as state-of-the-art automation, remote control, power supply, and firefighting systems. Term of this work is 22 months.

The turnkey contracts cover engineering, construction and supply of required materials and equipment by the contractors, Lukoil said.