This new water processing facility for Iraq’s West Qurna oil field, among its largest with an estimated 43 billion barrels of recoverable reserves, improves treatment and reuse of produced water during oil drilling to avoid untreated release and to enhance oil recovery, according to the submission.

Key challenges included the harsh desert climate, unexploded ordnance and toxic gases in the former war zone, the team notes. A sudden port closure that left materials and equipment inaccessible also threatened to cause a job shutdown. After a revised project scope was negotiated with the owner, budget and schedule requirements were met, the EPC contractor says.

Project staff represented 20 different nationalities. Long waits for Iraqi visas prompted the contractor to “strategically increase” the local workforce component to 65% for “accelerated mobilization,” says the team. Local workers and service providers took more than 4,100 hours of specialized training, with all project communication in Arabic, English, Turkish and Hindi.

To minimize work at the remote site, the contractor had components prefabricated in the UAE, South Korea, Turkey and Italy, including produced water treatment trains, air and nitrogen skids, vessels, associated platforms, piping, tanks and electrical room equipment.

State-of-the-art technology also expedited completion of oil and water separation, water filtration and sludge disposal processes. Use of AI software for remote real time 360° photographic updates improved safety planning and progress monitoring—earning the team special owner recognition, the submission says. The project scored 96.8 out of 100 in an owner satisfaction survey at close-out, according to the contractor.