Foster Wheeler Achieves “First Oil Ready for Startup Milestone”
FOSTER WHEELER-MANAGED IRAQ CRUDE OIL EXPORT EXPANSION PROJECT ACHIEVES “FIRST OIL READY FOR START-UP” MILESTONE
ZUG, SWITZERLAND, February 12, 2012 — Foster Wheeler AG (Nasdaq: FWLT) announced today that the Iraq Crude Oil Export Expansion Project (ICOEE) has achieved its “first oil ready for start-up” milestone. This is a significant step towards Iraq’s planned increase in crude exports. This first phase of the expansion is intended to increase the country’s crude oil export capacity by 1.8 million barrels per day (MMBPD) of additional production. A further increase of another 1.8 MMBPD in Iraq’s export capacity is intended to be delivered on completion of phase 2 of the expansion. Achievement of this milestone represents the start of the final commissioning activities leading to readiness of the facilities to load first oil cargo onto a tanker for export.
Foster Wheeler executed the front-end engineering design for the two-phase capacity increase and is currently the project management consultant (PMC) for the engineering, procurement and construction (EPC) of both phases of the project. South Oil Company, a company under the Ministry of Oil of the Republic of Iraq, with Foster Wheeler’s assistance, purchased long-lead items and free-issued these to the EPC contractors in order to assure the schedule.