Iraq is sweetening the terms to be offered to international companies ahead of a new bidding round for 12 exploration blocks, a senior Oil Ministry official said Wednesday.

The move comes as some oil majors, including France's Total SA (TOT) and ExxonMobil Corp. (XOM) of the U.S. , have shown more interest in exploration in the country's northern semi-autonomous Kurdistan region than from the middle and south, which are controlled by the central government.

"We are making positive changes to the [service] model contract for the fourth bidding round," Abdul Mahdy al-Ameedi, head of the Oil Ministry's Petroleum Contracts and Licensing Directorate told Dow Jones Newswires. He declined to give details, but said that the changes would "achieve the economic interests of companies."

Ameedi did say that the ministry has changed a provision that allowed Iraq to postpone development of fields, to seven years from the date of announcement of commercial amounts of oil or gas discovered in the block, which was mentioned in the previous model contract and was one of the terms disliked by potential bidders.

"We have dealt with this provision in a way which will be acceptable by companies," he said, but gave no further details.

Bidding companies will be informed of the changes in the coming two days, he said.

Iraq is planning in May to auction 12 promising exploration blocks, seven of which are believed to contain natural gas, and five thought to contain crude. The new bid round, expected to add some 10 billion barrels of crude oil and some 29 trillion cubic feet of gas to Iraq's reserves, has already been delayed twice amid arguments on whether the contracts offered should be of the production-sharing type wanted by the explorers or the fixed-fee service contracts wanted by the government.

For the fourth bidding round, Baghdad has so far refused to offer industry-standard production sharing contracts, where the oil company owns a portion of the oil in the ground and can profit from its sale. It is instead insisting on service contracts that pay companies a fixed fee for the amount of oil they produce.

As a result, Total has become the latest big oil company to shift the focus of its Iraq ambitions toward the Kurdistan region, and away from the much larger but economically challenging contracts offered by Baghdad . Total's chief executive said Friday he didn't plan to chase contracts in Baghdad 's fourth licensing round. ExxonMobil signed last year a contract with Kurdistan , a move which angered Baghdad and lead to the giant U.S. firm being threatened with losing its contract in southern Iraq .

Iraq said that it had qualified some 46 international firms, including the world's largest, to bid for the 12 blocks in the latest round. Ameedi had previously said that some 37 out of the 46 firms had already paid participation fees.

Baghdad has signed a series of deals with international companies in a bid to boost production capacity to 12 million barrels a day from nearly 3 million barrels a day presently.

The fourth bid round will help Iraq maintain and increase reserves to offset expected depletion and could strengthen its case to have the Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries set an export quota for Baghdad .

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