Russian state oil producer OAO Gazprom Neft has issued a new tender to drill six oil wells at the Badra oil field in eastern Iraq, the company said on its website.
Gazprom has set June 13, 2013 as a closing date for receiving offers.
The Gazprom consortium, which includes South Korea's Gas Corp., Turkish Petroleum Corp. or TPAO, and Malaysia's Petronas, plans to increase production from the field to 170,000 barrels a day by 2017, according to a development plan agreed with the Iraqi government.
Badra's reserves are estimated to be around 3 billion barrels of oil.
Gazprom, which owns the largest stake in the consortium at 40%, signed a contract with Baghdad to develop the field in January 2009.
Earlier in January Gazprom and its partners awarded an $879 million contract to South Korea's Samsung Group to design and build phase two of a central processing facility for oil production in the field.
