Done deal: at Rumaila
Baghdad names Rumaila date
The Iraqi Oil Ministry will sign a final deal with BP and China National Petroleum Corporation for the Rumaila field on 3 November, a spokesman said today.
A deal with an Eni-led consortium covering the Zubair field will be sealed on 1 November.
The BP contract has already been approved by the Iraqi Cabinet.
The contract for Zubair with Eni, Occidental Petroleum and South Korea's KOGAS, will have to go before the Cabinet, Oil Ministry spokesman Asim Jihad told Reuters.
The country hopes foreign investment will help it move up to third place with oil output of around 7 million barrels per day - triple current production of around 2.5 million bpd - within six or seven years.
Rumaila, with estimated reserves of 17 billion barrels, is the workhorse of Iraq's oil sector, producing almost half of the country's total daily output.
The deal with BP and CNPC was the only one that emerged from Iraq's first post-invasion auction of oil contracts in June after international firms balked at Iraq's stiff terms.
Subsequent negotiations behind closed doors have, however, led to other deals being worked out on some of the fields that were not successfully auctioned off. One of those is the agreement with Eni and its partners over Zubair.
Eni has said it expects to invest $10 billion in Zubair, which has estimated reserves of 4 billion barrels, and will boost production to 1.125 million bpd from 200,000 bpd within seven years.
Iraq will hold a second round of oilfield tenders on 11 and 12 December in which largely undeveloped fields will be on offer.