Iraq have invited 10 firms to drill 56 new wells in the supergiant Rumaila oilfield, an Iraqi official said on Wednesday.

Iraq has struck a series of development contracts with global oil majors that could also signal a bonanza for international oil service companies.

The 10 selected firms include a Turkish company and Chinese firms. The state-owned Iraq Drilling Company was also invited to bid.

"We prefer to directly invite those companies who have worked before with the South Oil Co, BP and CNPC. We want to shorten the procedures and time needed," Abdul-Mahdy al-Ameedi, director of the Oil Ministry's licensing office, told Reuters.

"We asked those companies to submit their bids and will study them. The best commercial tenders will be selected," he added, declining to give an estimate for the value of the bids.

BP and CNPC signed a 20-year development contract last year for Rumaila, which has 17 billion barrels of estimated crude reserves and is the workhorse of Iraq's oil industry.

It followed the Rumaila deal with nine others last year that could lift its capacity to 12 million barrels per day, rivalling top producer Saudi Arabia and offering an unprecedented workload to international oil companies.

Reuters