Oil ministry signs contract over Qarna oilfield

BAGHDAD / IraqiNews.com: The Iraqi oil ministry will wrap up on Sunday a series of oil contracts announced earlier by signing a final contract over West al-Qarna-2 oilfield as part of the two rounds of tenders with Russia’s Lukoil and Norway’s Statoil, a ministry spokesman said on Saturday. “The two companies pledged to up production to a peak of 1.800 million barrels per day at a rate of 1.15 dollars per barrel of additional produced barrel. The contract would offer a chance for Russian companies to have presence in Iraq after 2003 in one of the most important southern oilfields,” Assem 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 offer 100,000 jobs, as stated by Iraqi Minister of Oil Hussein al-Shahrestani. AmR (P) 2