Russia 's second-largest oil producer, Lukoil OAO Holdings (LKOH.RS), is considering getting involved in the redevelopment of Iraq 's giant Kirkuk oil field, a person familiar with the company's projects in Iraq said Monday.

"Lukoil has sent a letter to the Iraqi Prime Minister and the Oil Ministry stating that it is interested in the Kirkuk field development," the person said.

An official at Iraq 's state-owned North Oil Co., which is in charge of the Kirkuk field, declined to comment.

Production at Kirkuk , discovered in 1927, has declined to 260,000 barrels a day from 900,000 barrels a day in the early 2000s, after years of injecting water and the dumping of unwanted crude and other oil products into the field's reservoir.

Kirkuk was one of the fields offered for redevelopment to international oil companies by Baghdad in 2009. A consortium led by Royal Dutch Shell PLC (RDSB.LN) offered to boost output from the field to 825,000 barrels a day for a fee of $7.89 for each extra barrel of oil it produced, but Baghdad insisted on a payment of no more than $2 a barrel.

BP PLC (BP) said earlier this year that it had proposed a short-tem technical assistance program for the Kirkuk oil field, although neither the terms nor the duration had been agreed. A BP spokesman declined to provide any further information on this proposal Monday.

During his last visit to Moscow in July, Iraqi Prime Minister, Nouri al-Maliki, met with the President of Lukoil, Vagit Alekperov, and discussed mutual cooperation. Mr. al-Maliki told Alekperov that his government trusts Lukoil as a reliable firm.

Lukoil is already working in southern Iraq . It is developing the 13-billion-barrel West Qurna-2 oil project, which it expects to start production at 150,000 barrels a day either at the end of this year or early next year. The field was awarded to Lukoil in an auction in 2009.

Διαβάστε ακόμα