(Adds confirmation from Iraqi oil official, names of companies failed to be qualified.)
LONDON -(Dow Jones)- Iraq has selected nine companies, mostly state-owned concerns from emerging markets, to compete in a second oil bidding round, the country's Oil Ministry said.
Deputy Director General of the Petroleum Contracts and Licensing Directorate, or PCLD, Abdul Mahdy al-Ameedi confirmed to Dow Jones Newswires by telephone from Baghdad the pre-qualification of the nine companies.
In an undated statement posted on its Web site, the Ministry said the nine had been selected from 38 companies and consortia that had applied to participate for a second qualification process in the bidding round.
The selected candidates are: Rosneft (ROSN.RS) and OAO Tatneft (TATN.RS), both Russian state-owned companies; JSC KazMunaiGas Exploration and Production, a unit of the Kazakh national oil company; Vietnam-owned Petrovietnam Exploration and Production Corp.; Angolan national oil company Sonangol; Pakistan Petroleum Ltd.; India-owned Oil India Ltd. (OIL.Y); U.K. company Cairn Energy PLC (CNE.LN); and Japan Oil, Gas and Metals National Corp.
Sources familiar with the PCLD said among the companies which submitted their documents but didn't qualify for the second bidding round are SK Energy, Petrel Resources PLC, Dove Energy, Vitol Holding, Calik Enerji, Kuwait Energy, Murphy E&P and TNK-BP.
It isn't known yet why these companies and others weren't qualified by the Ministry.
Iraq announced a second-bidding round for oil and gas fields at the end of December, naming 11 fields it would open for bidding for development service contracts. The first bidding round was announced in June for eight oil and gas fields.
In April 2008 the Oil Ministry published a list of 35 oil companies that qualified to compete in its first bidding round, after around 120 firms submitted paperwork to apply.
The fields announced in the second round could increase oil production by up to 2.5 million barrels a day in a few years, Iraq's Oil Minister Hussein al-Shahristani said when he announced the tenders. That is about equal to what Iraq currently pumps.
-By Benoit.Faucon and Hassan Hafidh; Dow Jones Newswires; + 44-20-7842-9266; benoit.faucon@dowjones.com