Iraq to Open More Oil Fields to Bidding

Iraq announced on Wednesday that it would begin a second round of bids to license international oil companies to develop 11 oil and gas fields or groups of fields.

Iraq's oil minister, Hussain al-Shahristani, said at a news conference that he hoped that these fields could be producing 2 to 2.5 million barrels of oil a day in three or four years. The goal, he said, is to produce 6 million barrels a day in four or five years, up from the current 2.4 million.

The oil and gas fields are distributed around the country and include some that lie near the border or are shared with neighboring countries like Iran and Kuwait.

The first round of bids, announced last summer, is scheduled to be concluded in the middle of 2009. It will be for the development of six major oil fields and two gas fields.

The same 35 foreign companies that qualified to take part in the first round are involved in this one, said Ahmed al-Shammar, a deputy minister, but it is possible that more companies could be added.

Shahristani said he hoped the contracts in the second round would be signed by the end of 2009. He also said the ministry was planning to announce more licensing auctions in the future.

The ministry has come under criticism for the slow pace of Iraq's oil production. Although the country sits on one of the largest proven oil reserves in the world, roughly 115 billion barrels, security and infrastructure problems have left them largely untapped.

Iraq is producing far below its capacity, Shahristani acknowledged at the news conference, but he said opening these fields for development was meant to address that.

"There are about 78 oil and gas fields in Iraq, but only 15 of them are under operation," he said.

Plunging oil prices around the world have hurt Iraq's revenues as well; Iraq's oil is being sold for around $38 a barrel, a ministry official said, down nearly 70 percent from its high for 2008.

One of the other main events of Wednesday was to be the start of the trial of Muntader al-Zaidi, the Iraqi reporter who was arrested for throwing his shoes at President George W. Bush during a news conference two and a half weeks ago.

But Abdulsattar al-Berikdar, a spokesman for the Supreme Judicial Council, said the trial had been postponed because Zaidi's lawyer had filed an appeal.

In a phone interview, Dheyaa Saadi, the lawyer, said the appeal's purpose was to reduce the charge against Zaidi so that the case could be taken outside the jurisdiction of the Central Criminal Court of Iraq, which specializes in terrorism and other serious cases. A higher court will rule on the appeal.

Though recent statistics report that there were fewer civilian deaths in Iraq in 2008 than in any other year since the 2003 invasion, violence continues to buffet the volatile provinces of Nineveh and Diyala.

Two bombs exploded Wednesday in Mosul, the capital of Nineveh, killing 4 and wounding 20, a local security official said. The target of the first was a police patrol, and the second exploded shortly afterward, as bystanders gathered.

A candidate for the coming provincial elections was killed by unidentified gunmen on a major street in Mosul, a police official said. One policeman died in a gunfight with the attackers as they escaped.

The candidate, Mowaffaq al-Hamdani, was a Sunni Arab. The elections in Nineveh are seen as crucial for the Sunnis. Many of them boycotted the last election, leaving a provincial council dominated by a Kurdish bloc.

A car bomb exploded near a public market in Sinjar, a town in Nineveh near the Syrian border, killing 3 and wounding 35. The Kurds maintain a tight control of Sinjar, which they view as belonging to Kurdistan, a situation that has raised tensions with Sunni Arabs who live in the volatile, poverty-stricken towns to the south.

In Diyala, a bomb, its target an army patrol, exploded near Khanaqin, another area that has been involved in a tense standoff between Kurds and Arabs. Two were killed in the attack, including an officer, and two others were wounded, a security official said.