Gas, for the Emilian Sicim contract worth 619 million dollars in Iraq

«It is a contract that is dimensionally unprecedented in 61 years of activity, but this is the size of the projects that are currently being tendered and to which we will have to get used. The challenge for us is not technological but organisational.” Guido Cagnani, managing director and vice president of Sicim, thus comments on the awarding of a new EPC (engineering, purchase of materials and construction) order in Iraq worth 619 million dollars, an absolute record for the Busseto contractor, founded in 1962 by the family Riccardi is today one of the global giants in plants and infrastructures for treating, transporting and distributing oil, gas and water: 7 thousand employees in 26 offices around the world (200 in the Parma headquarters) and a turnover of 1.3 billion euros.

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1 Northwest of Basra

2 Kazakhstan, Saudi Arabia, Mexico

Northwest of Basra

The project, commissioned by Basra Oil Company (Boc) – an Iraqi state company responsible for the management and development of oil reserves in the south of the country, where Sicim has been operating since 2012 and is a consolidated and trusted supplier – will last two and a half years and will involve the hiring 2,000 locals and expatriates to develop gas sweetening units, nitrogen generation system and raw gas compression and dehydration plants in the West Qurna 2 area, in the southern part of Iraq northwest of Basra , an important port city and home to one of the largest gas fields in the world.

The works concern operating systems that cannot be shut down en masse and this will require managing the structures in parallel. «The amount of the project is very high – explains the director – because complex structures made up of components from Italian and international suppliers must be designed and installed and because the operations necessary to determine compatibility, interference and limitations during the planning phases are very delicate. and operational to be carried out simultaneously. It will be a good test to strengthen our skills in complex turnkey projects.”

Kazakhstan, Saudi Arabia, Mexico

But Iraq is not the only market in which Sicim is growing exponentially: excellent prospects are opening up in Kazakhstan, Saudi Arabia, Mexico, «for good luck I prefer not to reveal anything about the tenders being awarded – says Cagnani -. Even in Italy, which today accounts for 10% of our turnover, we are returning to work, including the hydrogen infrastructure and the Eni-Snam plant for the capture and storage of CO2″.