Exxon Mobil Corp. (XOM) may drill over 1,000 wells at Iraq 's supergiant West Qurna 1 oil field and has already awarded a well work contract, a senior company official said Monday.

"We've just awarded a well work contract and are in the process of awarding the first drilling contract," Exxon Mobil Iraq lead country manager James Adams told reporters on the sidelines of an energy conference in Doha, Qatar.

Currently there are around 370 wells at West Qurna 1 and the company aims to double or triple this number, Adams said without giving further details.

Production levels at the field, located in the south of Iraq near the city of Basra , are running at about 200,000 to 250,000 barrels a day, down from a peak of 400,000 barrels in 2004.

Exxon aims to boost production to about 2.3 million barrels a day by pumping water into the field to force out the oil.

"Pressure has depleted in the field and production has declined rapidly," Adams said. "Our job is to arrest and reverse this decline."

Adams said Exxon would only drill a "handful" of wells at West Qurna this year, without saying how many.

Exxon and Royal Dutch Shell PLC (RDSA) won the right to develop the 8.7-billion-barrel West Qurna Phase One in an auction held by Iraq last year for oil field development contracts. The consortium signed the field development contract in January this year and began work in March.

The consortium pledged to increase production to 2.325 million barrels a day and will receive $1.90 for each extra produced barrel of oil from the field.

The deal is one of a series to develop major and untapped oil fields that could catapult Iraq to third place among world oil producers and boost its capacity to Saudi Arabian levels of 12 million barrels a day, from around 2.5 million barrels a day currently. i-languJ�A-X�g (�g 's installed capacity of 3.76 million barrels a day.

Kuwait is currently supplying nine million tons per year to Indian Oil, Chairman B. M. Bansal said, adding that the company's crude oil requirement is going to rise as it commissions a 300,000 barrel a day refinery and petrochemicals complex at Paradip in the eastern state of Orissa.

Kuwait is currently the third-largest crude supplier to Indian Oil, Bansal said.

Shares of Indian Oil rose as much 4.2% on the news. They closed 2.6% higher at INR448.15, outperforming a flat Mumbai market.

Al-Sabah also said Kuwait has no plan to increase its stake in U.K.-based BP PLC (BP).

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