BP Plc and partners China's CNPC and Iraq's South Oil Co. expect to issue tenders to drill 40-50 new wells in the supergiant Rumaila oilfield this year and “about the same” next year, a company official said. The executive, speaking in Baghdad on Monday, said the tenders for next year's well contracts were expected to be issued and awarded at some stage this year. Earlier this year, Salah Mohammed, head of Rumaila Division at state-run South Oil Co., told Reuters the partners planned to drill more than 70 new wells this year alone. International service companies including Weatherford International Ltd have already been awarded contracts worth nearly $500 million to drill 49 new wells in Rumaila this year. BP and CNPC signed a 20-year development contract last year for Rumaila and expect to increase Rumaila's output to 2.85 million barrels per day. If the output is achieved, that would put Rumaila in second place worldwide after Saudi Arabia's Ghawar, the world's largest oilfield. The Rumaila deal is one of 11 oilfield development contracts signed with global majors that could quadruple Iraq's oil output capacity to 12 million bpd in seven years. Rumaila, with 17 billion barrels in estimated crude reserves, is the workhorse of Iraq's oil industry, producing almost half its total output of 2.5 million barrels per day. The field's reserves alone are bigger than those of the whole of Algeria, one of Iraq's fellow members in the Organization of the Petroleum Exporting Countries (OPEC). - Reuters Meanwhile, US oil prices rose on Monday, breaking a string of three losing sessions, advancing with a stock market that was boosted by optimism about quarterly earnings and shrugged off weak homebuildersentiment. US crude oil for August delivery on the New York Mercantile Exchange rose 53 cents, or 0.7 percent, to settle at $76.54 a barrel, trading as low as $75.50 and having rallied to an intraday peak of $77.69. The August crude contract expires on Tuesday. London ICE Brent crude for September delivery rose 25 cents to settle at $75.62. Traders said low trading volume contributed to the choppy price action. Crude oil trading volume was about 537,000 lots, 14.5 percent below the 30
