(Corrects year in which Mohammed says expects to drill 70 new wells to 2011 from 2010 in paragraph 3.)
BAGHDAD (Reuters) - BP <:BP.LO:>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 in 2011.
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 a series of 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 Organisation of the Petroleum Exporting Countries (OPEC).
(Reporting by Rania El Gamal; Writing by Michael Christie; Editing by Jane Baird)
