Italy-based Saipem SpA has recieved a contract worth USD 468.5 million to build an oil measuring and control platform at the country's major export terminals in Basra, Iraq. Saipem will complete the engineering, procurement and construction, or EPC, of the project within 22 months.

Leighton last year signed a contract worth USD 733 million to build three single point mooring buoys and two sub-sea pipelines. Leighton was also chosen to build a fourth SPM and a third sub-sea pipeline costing around USD 500 million in the Gulf, which will be financed by a Japanese loan.

These four SPMs would add around 3.5 million barrels a day of export capacity above the existing 1.8 million barrels a day. The whole project is part of Iraq's efforts to ease bottlenecks at its export terminals at a time when Baghdad signed mega-deals with international oil companies with the aim of quadrupling its crude oil output, which currently stands at 2.7 million barrels a day.