Russia’s petroleum major Lukoil finalized the bidding rounds for choosing the general con­tractor to be in charge of assembling onshore infrastructure in the Caspian region, including the facilities for the intake, storage, metering, and transporting oil from fields in the Caspian Sea.

The facilities are estimated to process as much as eight million tons of crude per year. The winning bid came from NefteGazMontazh, which is an entity possessing extensive experi­ence in the construction of oil and gas infra­structural objects. Onshore facilities are to be designed by VolgogradNIPImorneft.

The onshore portion of the oil infrastructure is to be built in Kalmykia. There, the infrastructure would need to be built near the Komsomolskaya pumping station, which belongs to the Caspian Pipeline Consortium and is located about 60 kilometers inland. The facilities will be linked with the Komsomolskaya pumping station using double pipes, each 530 millime­ters in diameter.

According to Lukoil’s designs, the onshore facilities are to incorporate four tanks having the volume of 20,000 cubic meters each. The tanks would have to include an automated anti­fire system, a metering device, heating coils, a gas distributing system, oil treatment facili­ties, as well as a fire station and a camp. The construction timeframe for the facilities is such that completion targets will be realistically met only in the middle of 2015.