The Iraqi Oil Ministry said Saturday that it has awarded world's leading energy companies with the development contracts of five more oilfields on the second day of the bidding.
The Russian Lukoil and its partner the Norway's Statoil on Saturday won the right to develop Iraq's super giant West Qurana Phase 2 oil field, Oil Minister Hussein al-Shahristani said. The group accepted a remuneration of
1.15 U.S. dollars per barrel extracted from the field. The West Qurna Phase 2 has an estimated reserves of 12.9 billion barrels of oil.
Another consortium comprising of Russian giant oil firm of Gazprom, the Republic of Korea's Kogas, Malaysia's Petronas and Turkey's TPAO, won the right of developing the Badra oilfield in eastern Iraq.
Also on Saturday, an oil ministry source told Xinhua that the ministry reached an agreement with Sonangol over the Qaiyarah oilfield in the north of the country. The Angolan company failed Friday to strike the deal after
it refused the offered price by the ministry of five U.S. dollars per barrel, but later it accepted to work on the field climbing down from its initial price of 12.50 U.S. dollars.
The same Angolan firm won another oilfield of Najmah in Nineveh province in northern Iraq for a fee of six dollars per barrel.
The Iraqi ministry also awarded the Garraf oil field to a group of Malaysia's Petronas and Japan's Japex.
On Friday, two deals were struck at the auction. The Royal Dutch Shell and Malaysia's Petronas were awarded the contract to exploit the Majnoon oilfield in southern Iraq, one of the world's largest untapped oil fields with more than 12 billion barrels of proven reserves. A consortium led by China National Petroleum Corporation (CNPC), China's largest oil and gas
producer, together with Petronas and France's Total, won the contract for the Halfaya oilfield, also in the south.
More than 40 world oil companies from 23 countries, including BP and Total, are seeking investment in 10 Iraqi oil fields over two days in Iraq's second round of bidding since 2003.
The first auction round was held in June this year, in which the CNPC joined hands with BP to win the Rumaila oilfield service contract.