VIENNA, May 30 (Reuters) - Baghdad and a group led byItaly's Eni have agreed to cut the planned outputtarget at Iraq's Zubair oilfield to allow this southern giant topump more for a longer period.
Iraqi Oil Minister Abdul Kareem Luaibi said on Thursday Baghdad is lowering plateau production rates at core southernoilfields in line with a more realistic target of 9 millionbarrels per day (bpd), versus an original 12 million to bereached by 2017.
"Eni agreed a new plateau for that field ... the new plateaufor Zubair will be 850,000 barrels a day," said Luaibi ahead ofa meeting of the Organization of the Petroleum ExportingCountries. The original target was 1.2 million bpd.
Eni, U.S. Occidental Petroleum Corp and SouthKorea's KOGAS signed a 20-year deal with Iraq in 2010 to developZubair, now pumping around 270,000 bpd. The consortium isexpecting to invest $18 billion in Zubair.
Iraq has signed multi-billion dollar deals withinternational oil companies, including Royal Dutch Shell, Exxon and BP, to develop fields in thesouth, where most of its crude is produced.
The country needs to boost output to strengthen its positionas OPEC's second-biggest producer, but infrastructurebottlenecks and attacks on its northern export line have slowedgrowth.
Its oilfields are now pumping 3.1 million bpd, said Luaibi,steady versus last month.
New plateau levels are also being negotiated with BP atRumaila and Exxon Mobil at West Qurna-1, said the oil minister.
Luaibi also said output from the southern Majnoon oilfield,operated by Shell, would start initial output of some 100,000bpd in the coming days. Flows are expected to reach 175,000 bpdby the end of the year.
Further north, development of the Badra oilfield, near theborder with Iran, faces delays after Schlumberger stoppeddrilling due to tough conditions, said Luaibi.
He expects the oilfield, operated by Russia's Gazprom Neft,the oil arm of Gazprom, to start up early next year.
Last year Gazprom Neft also acquired interests in two blocksin Iraqi Kurdistan despite Baghdad's opposition to internationaloil firms developing fields in the autonomous region.
