Shafaq News/ Oil ministry announced on Thursday it will  end The standard contract for the fourth licensing round in February, followed by the announcement of the winning companies round in March."The number of companies that bought the information packages and will participate in the fourth round of licenses is 37 companies from among 46 eligible global companies." The deputy director of contracts and licenses in the Oil Ministry Sabah al-Sa’adi said to  "Shafaq  News"."The oil ministry will complete the standard contract in the 3rd of next February after including  companies observations in it ," Sa’adi said ,adding that "the companies' bids will open in the seventh and the eighth of March and the names of the winning companies in the round will be announced in those days, too."He said, "The 37 companies that participated, are all international companies (ioc). They are  Asian, Western, Japanese, Chinese, Russian and others."

The Iraqi Oil Ministry has recently announced it is launching the fourth round of licensing contracts to include the oil fields located in areas not covered by the previous rounds.

Iraq had signed over the past year 2010 contracts with several international companies to develop some oil fields in the first and second rounds of licensing, to raise the production ceiling to 11 million barrels per day within the next six years, and 12 million barrels a day, after the addition of the quantities of the other fields with national efforts .