ENKA was awarded a contract by ExxonMobil Iraq limited (EMIL) in July 2015 for a new oil processing facility, called Initial Oil Train (IOT), to increase production at its West Qurna 1 (WQ1) Oil Field in Iraq. The end-user of this new facility is Basrah Oil Company (BOC) of Iraq.

West Qurna is one of the largest oil fields in Iraq with an estimated 43 billion barrels of recoverable reserves. In January 2010, EMIL, an affiliate of Exxon Mobil Corporation, signed an agreement with BOC of Iraq Ministry of Oil to rehabilitate and redevelop the WQ1 field. Facility is located approximately 50 km north-west of Basrah in south-eastern Iraq. WQ1 is one of three segments of one large oil field complex located in southern Iraq that is bounded by the Rumaila Field to the south and the West Qurna II field to the north.

The facility, located in the province of Basrah, is designed to process full well stream fluids from the production wellhead area and separate them into associated gas, untreated produced water and stable product crude for export. The contract required modularization of the facility to the maximum possible extent with consideration of the logistics constraints.

The site and camp are in areas contaminated with Unexploded Ordnance and Explosive Remnants of War. Clearance activities were conducted by the Owner. Movements were allowed in designated areas only.

Toxic gases constituted another risk. Critical levels of hydrocarbon emissions are occasionally observed. H2S, LEL, CO and SOx monitoring was conducted constantly.

The challenge of executing the project at multiple locations (i.e. engineering offices in UAE, USA, India, Türkiye and Canada, fabrication yards in UAE, Türkiye, Italy, Luxembourg, construction site in Iraq) with different time zones and day/night shifts, was overcome by extensive planning and proper interface management.

ENKA, with its regional partner Kentz, provided the front-end engineering design (FEED), detailed design engineering, procurement, fabrication, construction, commissioning and start-up assistance to EMIL for the new facility, which is capable of producing an annual average of 100,000 stock tank barrels of crude oil per day and constructed adjacent to the existing degassing station facility DS8.

ENKA fabricated the pipe rack modules of the facility through its subsidiary Çimtaş. The supply, fabrication, testing and trial assembly works were carried out at the Çimtaş Module & Shipyard Facilities in Gölcük – Kocaeli, Türkiye, and the modules then were directly shipped to site.