By John Lee.

Habtoor Leighton Group (HLG) chairman, Riad Al Sadik (pictured), has said Leighton’s name “became very, very bad in Iraq” in 2012 following the bribery scandal.

“HLG was definitely affected,” he told The Australian. “It took us quite some time to clean this up.”

The company sacked a senior manager last year as part of its probe into allegations of bribery related to its $1.3 billion of oil contracts in Iraq.

(Source: Business Spectator, The Australian)

By John Lee.

Habtoor Leighton Group (HLG) has been awarded a sub-contract for the construction of infrastructure in Southern Iraq and is part of an engineering, procurement and construction project to deliver a central production facility.

The Australian reports that the contract is valued at more than $200 million.

HLG CEO and Managing Director Laurie Voyer (pictured) said, the project is in line with the Group’s strategy to diversify its work by type and geography and will be the first contract HLG has been awarded in Iraq.

“HLG has developed an outstanding reputation for delivering complex projects in remote locations, and we are delighted to be working on this key project,” he said.

HLG’s initial scope of works comprises the partial engineering, and construction of civil, utility, and infrastructure works, including:

• Site offices
• Earthworks, roads and buildings
• Equipment installation, electrical and instrumentation
• Oil and water storage tanks
• Pre-commissioning

“This project provides HLG with an opportunity to demonstrate our outstanding construction capabilities and ability to deliver the project to the highest international standards,” said HLG Chairman, Riad T Sadik.

“We appreciate the importance of this project, and its successful delivery will stand HLG in good stead to secure additional oil and gas-related work – further cementing our position as one of the leading diversified international contractors in the Middle East and North Africa,” Mr Sadik said.

Works will commence immediately, with completion scheduled for early 2014.

(Sources: HLG, The Australian)

By John Lee.

Sixteen companies have bid to build a 480 billion-dinar ($412 million) breakwater for Iraq’s Grand Fao [Grand Faw] port.

Omran Radhi, director general of the State Company for Iraq’s Ports, told Bloomberg that the list of bidders includes:

• Hyundai Engineering & Construction;
• Daewoo Engineering & Construction;
• Dredging International;
• China Communications Construction Company; and,
• Al Habtoor Leighton Group.

There were also bids from Brazilian, Turkish, Italian, Ukrainian, Jordanian and Iraqi companies.

The esults will be announced after an evaluation that will take up to two months, Radhi said, adding that construction of the breakwater will be financed by the government.

The Grand Fao port will have capacity for more than 30 ships and will provide at least 100,000 jobs, Radhi said in a March 5 interview. The first phase of he project will cost $6 billion (7.2 trillion Iraqi dinars).

(Sources: Bloomberg, AKnews)

By John Lee.

Australian construction group Leighton Holdings has sacked a senior manager, whom it did not name, as part of its probe into allegations of bribery related to its $1.3 billion of oil contracts in Iraq.

The company said “its internal review of the Iraq projects undertaken by its subsidiary, Leighton Offshore Pte Limited, has identified instances of failures to meet governance standards in respect of the proper documentation of contractual arrangements. As a consequence, a senior manager has been dismissed.”

Leighton Holdings’ Chief Executive Officer, Hamish Tyrwhitt, said:

“Leighton’s values are integral to Leighton’s approach to business. No deviation from those values will be tolerated and appropriate disciplinary action will be taken if necessary.“

The internal review followed the announcement in February that the company had made a voluntary referral to the Australian Federal Police (AFP). Leighton is continuing to cooperate with the ongoing AFP investigation.

Leighton was working on the new floating Single Point Mooring (SPM) platforms in the Gulf.

Reuters reports that Petrofac has won a $95 million contract to carry out maintenance work for Iraq’s new offshore terminals and sub-sea pipelines at the Gulf.

The contract involves maintenance work to ensure there are no leakages in the pipelines or any faults at the two new single point mooring (SPM) terminals that may delay the loading of crude.

Iraq’s South Oil Company awarded the deal to Petrofac ahead of the also shortlisted Saipem of Italy and Australia’s Leighton Holdings.

“Petrofac’s offer was picked for the service contract and the one year extendable contract has been referred to the oil minister for final approval,” the oil official, who declined to be named, said.

Two of Iraq’s four new SPM terminals, built by Leighton, have already started operation and have boosted oil exports significantly.

(Source: Reuters)

Technical glitches have halted exports from Iraq’s new offshore oil export terminal for the past week after it loaded just a single tanker, two sources at the state-owned South Oil Company said on Tuesday, according to Reuters.

The first of four single-point mooring (SPM) terminals, which are being built by Australia’s Leighton Holdings, opened on 8th March after being held up for weeks by bad weather and technical issues.

It loaded 2 million barrels of oil into its first ship, the Maersk Hirado (pictured), over five days, marking a major increase in Iraq’s export capacity, but has since been shut due to technical problems, the sources said.

They said the second SPM would come on line in April.

(Source: Reuters)

Reuters, citing two sources at the state-owned South Oil Company, reports that Iraq began loading oil from a long-awaited new floating Single Point Mooring (SPM) platform in the Gulf on Thursday.

“We started the loading at 2:45 pm (1145 GMT). The loading process is normal. The situation of pipes and the SPM is stable, and we have no problems,” said one of the sources.

The average loading rate into the tanker Maersk Hirado was 22,000 barrels per hour, the source said.

The opening of its new platform, built by Australian construction firm Leighton, had been held up for weeks, with officials blaming poor weather.

The new terminal is the first of a planned four, each of which will ultimately have a capacity of 850,000 barrels per day, adding 3.4 million barrels of export capacity to make way for a doubling of Iraq’s oil production in the next few years.

For now, the South Oil Company says the first platform will increase its exports by 300,000 barrels per day.

(Source: Reuters)

A departmental head at Iraq’s South Oil Company (SOC) has reportedly fled the country after being accused of accepting bribes from a subsidiary of Australia’s Leighton Holdings to help it secure contracts in southern Iraq.

Uday Awad, a member of the Iraqi parliament’s oil and energy committee, told The Australian that the head of the SOC department, whom he declined to name, could have been the front man for other senior officials to receive the bribes.

It is believed that the SOC official, who had been removed from his post, has fled Iraq to a neighboring country. His whereabouts are unknown.

Awad also told The Australian that a group of Iraqi parliament members recently visited the SOC in Basra, where the company’s director general told them the accused individual has been identified and is under investigation.

Last month Leighton Holdings alerted Australian federal police to possible corruption by Leighton Offshore in Iraq

In October 2010 Leighton Offshore was awarded a contract with SOC to install three single point moorings and 120km of 48-inch pipelines in the Arabian Gulf, offshore Iraq.

In October 2011 the subsidiary received further contracts with SOC worth $79m and $518m. The latter was financed and supported through a Japanese Official Development Assistance loan by the Japan International Cooperation Agency (JICA).

Last month Iraq opened the first of Leighton’s single point mooring sea terminals.

(Source: AKnews)