BAGHDAD, Dec. 11 (UPI) -- No bids were tendered for Iraqi oil fields in Iraq's restive Diyala province, officials said Friday.
Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki inaugurated a second round of bidding to tap into Iraq's vast oil reserves.
Auctions in June were lauded as a milestone for post-war Iraq, but security and the contract terms kept many investors away.
Representatives from 45 companies competed for contracts for 15 Iraqi oil fields, including several of the world's largest. Despite steady improvements in the overall security situation in Iraq, no bids were recorded for the East Baghdad field or for fields in Diyala province, the Voices of Iraq news agency reports.
Iraqi Oil Minister Hussain al-Shahristani said his country would develop the fields not awarded in the second auction using national capabilities.
"We will develop these fields either as a national administration or by other means that will be decided later by the ministry," he said.
A group led by China National Petroleum Corp. won a deal to develop the giant Halfaya oil field in southern Iraq with reserves estimated at 4.1 billion barrels of oil. Royal Dutch Shell and Petronas of Malaysia, meanwhile, secured the rights to develop the massive Majnoon field in Basra.
There was little interest in fields in the north of the country, and the bids fell short of securing the 7 million barrels per day of production capacity expressed by Iraq as a national goal.
