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Iraq to name foreign firms to develop oil

Oil&Gas Materials 28 June 2009 15:50 (UTC +04:00)

The Iraqi government is to name the list of foreign firms that have won contracts to develop the country's oil and gas fields, Press TV reported.

The deals, likely to be announced live on television on June 29 and 30 will provide the government with much-needed revenue after three wars and 20 years of debilitating economic sanctions.

Thirty-one companies have submitted bids to develop six giant oil fields and two gas fields.

Iraq's oil deposits hold known reserves of 43 billion barrels of crude.

"Our principal objective is to increase our oil production from
2.4 million barrels per day to more than four million in the next five years," Oil Minister Hussein al-Shahristani said in an interview with Iraqi public television.

Increasing production to that level will, according to him, earn an extra 1.7 trillion dollars for the Iraqi government over the next 20 years.

Shahristani noted that only 30 billion dollars of that sum will go to the companies that have extracted the oil.

"This is a huge amount that would finance infrastructure projects across Iraq -- schools, roads, airports, housing, hospitals," he said, insisting that the country would retain control over its oil reserves.

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