Petrofac has secured a contract worth $75m from South Oil Company (SOC) for its Iraq Crude Oil Export Expansion Project (ICOEEP), World Oil reported.

The one-year contract with a one-year option was awarded following a competitive tender. Under the new agreement, Petrofac will continue to facilitate a substantial proportion of Iraq’s oil export which is generated from the facility located 60km offshore the Al Fao Peninsula in southern Iraq. The company’s principal role is to provide operations and maintenance services for the export facilities, comprising the central metering and maintenance platform and four single point moorings, and the loading of the tankers for onward transportation, informed Offshore Magazine.

Iraq Crude Oil Export Expansion Project (ICOEEP) is a 247km-long pipeline master planned by the Iraqi Ministry of Oil (MoO). The pipeline would increase the country’s Basra crude oil export capacity. It would be located in the Persian Gulf of Iraq. The ICOEEP was conceptualized in 2007 when the Iraqi Ministry of Oil decided to increase Iraq’s export capacity of the existing offshore facilities from 1.8mb/d to 4.5mb/d within five years, according to Hydrocarbon Technology.

Petrofac’s Managing Director for Engineering & Production Services East, Mani Rajapathy, said: “Over the last four years we’ve achieved some significant milestones on this project, including the export of more than 1.5b barrels of oil.” He added: “the teams celebrated achieving five million man-hours worked without a lost time incident which is testament to the safety culture that has been created on the project.”