Shell Awards Majnoon field Contract to Halliburton

Iraq, along with oil and gas major Royal Dutch Shell and Malaysia's Petronas have awarded a contract to Halliburton Co to drill 15 oil wells in the giant Majnoon oilfield, an oil official said.

Oil and gas services company Petrofac also secured a contract to build two new crude processing plants with a capacity of 50,000 barrels per day (bpd) each and to rehabilitate the existing crude plant, the official added.

"These contracts are part of implementing the preliminary plan to develop Majnoon oilfield for the next two years," the oil official told Reuters on condition of anonymity.

Shell and Petronas signed a final contract to develop Iraq's Majnoon oilfield, one of the world's biggest, earlier this year. The eventual output target for the field is 1.8 million bpd compared with current output of just under 45,000 bpd.

Petrofac, whose activities range from designing and building oil and gas infrastructure to safety training, is also expected to start engineering designs, procurement and build new storage and export turbines for the oilfield.

The company was awarded a two-year contract.

Iraq has struck a series of development contracts with global oil majors that could also signal a bonanza for international oil service companies.

Iraq awarded a series of massive oilfield development contracts last year to majors such as Shell and BP that could quadruple its output capacity to 12 million barrels per day within seven years.

Those output levels would rival top producer Saudi Arabia and provide Iraq with the billions of dollars it needs to rebuild after decades of war, sanctions and neglect.