Oil Ministry finalizes contract for Qarna oilfield

BAGHDAD / IraqiNews.com: The Iraqi Ministry of Oil has signed a final contract with Russia’s Lukoil and Norway’s Statoil to develop West al-Qarna-2 oilfield as part of the second oil licensing round. “The companies have pledged to increase production to a peak of 1.8 million barrels per day (bpd) at a rate of $1.15 for each additional barrel of oil produced,” a spokesperson for the ministry, Assam Jihad, told IraqiNews.com news agency. Qarna-2 has a huge reserve estimated to reach 13 billion barrels. The field lies in southern Iraq, west of the Majnoon oilfield, whose reserves are equal to Qarna-2. The ministry had signed last week a final contract to develop the first stage of West Qarna oilfield with a conglomeration of Exxon Mobil and Shell companies, hopefully to up production by more than two million barrels and to offer 100,000 jobs, as stated by Iraqi Minister of Oil Hussein al-Shahrestani. SS (P) 2