Next to the gleaming new gathering centre 25 due for commissioning around the turn of the year, boosting production capacity from the northern fields, lies the twisted wreckage of its predecessor destroyed during the war. Yet with the destroyed wells capped long ago and replacement processing plants in operation and under construction, the task that foreign oil companies will be asked to do in the northern oilfields of Raudhatain, Sabriyah, Ratqa and Abdali is a more prosaic one, the kind of bread-and-butter business they are used to around the world.