UK oil major BP and its partners have awarded Worley Parsons of Australia a contract to provide conceptual design, front-end engineering design (feed) and project management services to boost production at the Rumaila oil field in southern Iraq.

The contract will be executed from Worley Parsons’ offices in London, the UAE and Iraq, with an initial revenue of more than $100m, according to a 18 February company statement.

In a consortium with China’s PetroChina, a subsidiary of state-owned China National Petroleum Corporation and Iraq’s State Oil Marketing Organisation (Somo), BP signed a 20-year technical service contract in November 2009 with the South Oil Company.

The partners are required to raise production to 2.85 million barrels a day (b/d) over the next six years, from about 1 million b/d.

They have formed the Rumaila Operating Organisation (ROO) and increasing production by more than 10 per cent above the 1.06 million b/d initial production rate agreed in December 2009. A total of 20 new rigs are now mobilised in the field and 41 wells have been drilled (MEED 8:10:10).

Baghdad has sought to increase oil output, signing 11 production licensing agreements with intenatioal oil companies as part of its plan to lift output from the current level of 2 million b/d to 6 million b/d by 2016.