along with Royal Dutch Shell and Malaysia’s Petronas have awarded a contract to Halliburton to drill 15 oil wells in the supergiant Majnoon oil field, an oil official said on Monday.

Oil and gas services company Petrofac also won a contract to build two new crude processing plants with a capacity of 50,000 bpd per each and to rehabilitate the existing crude plant, the official added.

Shell said earlier that the 15 new wells will be drilled over the next two years and would help lift production to 175,000 barrels a day by 2012 from current 45,000 barrels a day.

Shell and Petronas were awarded a contract in December to develop the Majnoon field, which is located in Basra governorate and holds some 12.6 billion barrels of proven oil reserves. Shell owns 45% of the venture and Petronas 30%, with Iraq’s state-run Missan Oil Co. holding 25%.