Iraq has invited Total SA (TOT), Chevron Corp. (CVX), StatoilHydro ASA (STO) and a fourth company to negotiate a contract for the super giant Nahr Bin Umar oil field in southern Iraq, a senior Iraqi oil official involved in talks with international oil companies told Dow Jones Newswires Monday.
He said France's Total and Chevron of the U.S. had earlier formed a consortium and they surveyed a number of Iraqi oil fields among them Nahr Bin Umar which has about 6.6 billion barrels of reserves and a potential production of 440,000 barrels a day.
"These companies are invited to compete for engineering, procurement and construction contracts," the official told Dow Jones Newswires by telephone from Baghdad.
A spokeswoman for the Norwegian company Friday confirmed that the Iraqi government invited StatoilHydro to negotiate a contract for the development of the field.
The Nahr Bin Umar field's contract would be similar in format to a contract in the southern Nasiriyah field for which Japan's Nippon Oil Corp. (5001.TO), Italy's Eni SpA (E) and Spain's Repsol YPF SA (REP) are vying.
"There are other fields which the ministry is planning to announce for EPC contracts shortly," the official said.
The EPC contracts would be in addition to two current bidding rounds for service contracts in Iraqi oil fields, which hold the world's third-largest reserves but are underexploited due to war, sanctions and underinvestment.
Development of Nahr Bin Umar is part of a "Crush Plan" launched earlier this month by the oil ministry to increase Iraqi oil production by 500,000 barrels a day in two years time. Iraq is currently producing around 2.3 million barrels a day.
In the 1990s, France's Total signed tentative agreement with Saddam Hussein's regime to develop Nahr Bin Umar, but no final deal was signed due to the then economic sanctions.