12-01-09 Technip, Stone & Webster and Foster Wheeler won contracts to design four refineries in Iraq as the country works to end fuel shortages, Iraq's Deputy Oil Minister said.
Ahmad al-Shammaa told that Foster Wheeler won a contract to design the Nassiriya refinery, Technip the Kerbala plant and Stone & Webster two refineries in northern and southern Iraq. Shammaa, Iraq's top negotiator with international companies on building new refineries, said, "It could take these companies nearly two years to finish designs of these refineries."

The ministry wants to build a large refinery in central Iraq at Hindeyah near the highway between Kerbala and Najaf, south of Baghdad, with 140,000 bpd processing capacity. It also plans to build the Nasiriya refinery, near the city of Nasiriya in southern Iraq, to process 300,000 bpd to address an acute fuel shortage in Iraq.
A third refinery is planned in the oil-rich Kirkuk province with 150,000 bpd processing capacity. The last one is planned in the Missan province to produce 150,000 bpd.

The ministry, however, doesn't want to wait for two years before awarding contracts to international companies to build these four refineries.
"We want to sign contracts with international companies to invest in these refineries before their design is finished," Shammaa said.

The deputy minister said a company which wants to build a refinery can cooperate with the one which is designing it. He said that the ministry had received several requests from international companies to invest in these refineries but none of them was serious and they were just putting forward proposals.
"We are looking for serious investors to invest on these refineries," he said.

Iraq's new refineries, which will take several years to build, are expected to boost the country's fuel production and counter crippling gasoline and other fuel products shortages.
Iraq boasts the world's third-largest known reserves of oil but decades of wars, sanctions, underinvestment and violence and sabotage have left the country critically short of fuel. It now imports more than a quarter of its gasoline needs. Oil officials say Iraq's existing large three refineries in Baiji, Baghdad and Basra, are operating only at half their capacities, forcing the country to import fuel at millions of dollars a month.