AMMAN (Dow Jones)--The Iraqi government has agreed that Mitsubishi Corp. (8058.TO) will partner Royal Dutch Shell PLC (RDSB.LN) in a joint venture to build infrastructure to exploit natural gas produced from oil fields in southern Iraq, an Iraqi oil ministry official said Thursday.
"(Iraq's Oil Minister Hussein) Al-Shahristani along with a number of cabinet advisers has given Shell the approval to include Mitsubishi," the official told Dow Jones Newswires by telephone from Baghdad.
Al-Shahristani met in Baghdad Wednesday with a Shell executive and officials from the state-run South Gas Company, an affiliate of the oil ministry, the official said.
Iraq signed last September a preliminary agreement with Shell to jointly develop domestic gas infrastructure in Iraq's south.
The deal aims at utilizing around 700 million cubic feet of gas that is being flared from oil fields every day in Basra. It is valued at between $3 billion and $4 billion.