Executives Raring to Develop Iraqi Oil Fields : Petroleum: Talks on scope of future projects with foreign firms is well advanced, ministry says.

Foreign oil company executives leaving Baghdad after a weekend oil conference are lining up to develop giant oil fields once U.N. sanctions against Iraq are lifted.

“As soon as the embargo is lifted, we hope to be among the first possible partnerships in the development of Iraq’s oil reserves,” said Christophe De Margerie, executive vice president of the French oil company Total.

The United Nations imposed trade sanctions against Iraq after its invasion of Kuwait in August, 1990. The U.N. Security Council was due to review the sanctions on Monday, but no member was expected to make a formal move to ease the trade ban.

Iraq, which has the world’s second-largest oil reserves after Saudi Arabia, is discussing the development of 10 fields with foreign oil companies that could produce some 3 million barrels a day, Iraqi oil ministry officials say.

No contracts have been signed because of sanctions, but negotiations on the scope of future projects are well advanced, Iraqi officials and company delegates say.

France’s Total is aiming to develop the Nahr Umar field in southern Iraq, while another French firm, Elf Aquitaine, has been widely linked to the neighboring Majnoon field development.

The two fields could each produce at least 300,000 barrels a day when developed, according to Ibrahim Razzaq, a field manager with the state oil operator South Oil Co.

“With the quantity of reserves available and the fact that we have worked here in the past, there are many opportunities,” Elf Vice President Jean Alliot said.

Italy’s Agip says it has not yet chosen a field but is understood to be in talks with Iraq’s oil ministry about oil fields in southern Iraq.

The majority of companies here said the two-day conference was a useful fact-finding exercise but that possible deals with Iraq, even when sanctions are lifted, are still distant.

“We’re just sniffing around. Iraq has large-scale reserves,” said a manager with a Western oil company who declined to be named.

A research paper compiled by Iraqi oil ministry officials and presented to the conference says the country would be able to export as much oil as it did before its 1990 invasion of Kuwait within two years of the removal of U.N sanctions.

It projects that Iraq will export 2.6 million barrels of oil a day in the first year after the lifting of the ban and increasing to 2.97 million barrels a day a year later.

Iraq was exporting 2.784 million barrels a day in the first half of 1990, it says.

No U.S. company nor officials from the so-called oil “majors” were directly represented at the conference.

In addition to Total and Elf, managers from French companies Gaz De France, Forasol and Toro were present. Russian companies included Kond Petroleum, Machinoimport and Zangas.

Companies from Canada, Britain, Australia, Germany, Finland, South Korea, Ireland, Turkey, Spain, Greece and the United Arab Emirates also took part in the conference.