Iraqi oil to the highest bidder - and the winners are Russia, Norway, a Shell consortium and China

SHOOT: Interesting, although it's difficult to imagine that these Iraqi fields are secure or will be for lengths of time in the future.

clipped from news.bbc.co.uk Earlier, a joint bid by Russian and Norwegian oil firms won the contract for the "supergiant" West Qurna field, said to have reserves of 13bn barrels. Lukoil and Statoil will get $1.15 a barrel and will work to raise output from West Qurna Phase 2, in the Basra region, to 1.8m bpd. In June, a winning bid to develop another Iraqi field received $2 a barrel. On Friday, the contract to develop the 12.6bn-barrel Majnoon field in southern Iraq was won by a consortium led by Shell. It also pledged to increase daily production to 1.8m barrels, up from only 46,000. Rights for the eastern Halfaya field, with 4.1bn barrels of reserves, went to a consortium led by the Chinese state oil company, CNPC. Iraq's proven reserves now stand at 115bn barrels, below Iran's 137bn and Saudi Arabia's 264bn. But Iraq's data dates from the 1970s, before improvements in technology transformed the industry.