A consortium led by Russian energy giant Gazprom has won rights to develop an Iraqi oil field near the Iranian border, Iraqi Oil Ministry announced Thursday.

As per the deal, the consortium comprising Gazprom, Malaysia’s Petronas and South Korean and Turkish companies is to boost oil production from the Badra field, some 170 kilometres south of Baghdad, to 170,000 barrels per day, Oil Ministry official Abdel-Karim Laibi told reporters at the Iraqi capital Baghdad.

He said the consortium would get $5.50 per barrel.

Most of the other oil contracts awarded since Iraq opened bidding to develop its oil fields have provided for a return of less than half of that amount.

The deal to develop the Badra field came amid rising protests from Iraqi Sunni leaders over reports that Iranian troops had raised the Iranian flag over an oil well near the border last week.

Laibi said Badra oil field was located in Iraqi territory and
“there is no problem with the Iranian side.”

Iran had dismissed as a ‘misunderstanding’ the controversy over an Iraqi general’s report on Friday last that Iranian troops had “occupied” the Number-4 oil well on the al-Fakkah field.

Iraqi Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki, who had spent much of the 1980s in exile in Iran, called for calm and said the incident was being dealt with through diplomatic channels.

But Iraqi Vice-President Tariq al-Hashemi, a Sunni Muslim, issued a strongly-worded protest over the reported Iranian incursion. Protests had been reported from a nearby university, and a Sunni tribal leader announced the formation of an armed force to protect oil wells on the border.

The force, which Sunni tribal leader Sheikh Mohammed al-Zidawi said was drawn from 126 Iraqi tribes, “is not a militia or terrorist group, but a national tribal force,” Iraq’s al-Sumaria news agency quoted him as saying.