A Japanese consortium led by Japan's Nippon Oil Corp. (5001.TO) could finalize this week an $8 billion deal to develop Iraq's southern Nassiriya oil field, a senior Iraqi oil official said Monday.
A Japanese consortium led by Japan 's Nippon Oil Corp. (5001.TO) could finalize this week an $8 billion deal to develop Iraq 's southern Nassiriya oil field, a senior Iraqi oil official said Monday.

Sabah Abdul Kadhem al-Saadi, director of legal and commercial office at the Oil Ministry's Petroleum Contracts and Licensing Directorate, said they addressed some issues during Sunday's meeting and they would meet again Monday.

"We could also meet on Tuesday," he said. But al-Saadi said if they couldn't work out a final contract this week they need to meet again after the Moslem Eid holidays, starting this weekend. The Iraqi oil ministry's offices will close for at least five days.

"Now we are working out details of the contract. We could finalize all these details during these meetings and reach an agreement," he said.

Al-Saadi said the payment issue still needs to be worked out. "There is a loan (from a Japanese state-bank) to finance the project and that loan needs to go to the Development Fund of Iraq (which is based in New York )," he said. "We are working out how the Japanese consortium would be paid back in a later stage when oil production starts from the field," he added.

Nippon , which is teaming up with Japan 's Inpex Corp. (1605.TO) and JGC Corp. (1963.TO), aims at signing an engineering, procurement and construction, or EPC, contract to develop the field with estimated proven crude oil reserves of more than 4.4 billion barrels.

Nippon plans to invest up to $8 billion to take output from the field to 200,000 barrels a day within 24 months, from the current 20,000 barrels a day, Iraqi oil officials said.

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