Baghdad  - Iraqi Ministry of Oil has made remarkable progress in negotiations with international oil firms over short-term contracts for technical support and to help raise oil output ahead of awarding long-tern contracts, an oil official told Deutsche Presse- Agentur dpa.

The official, who spoke on condition of anonymity, said the Ministry of Oil made significant progress in negotiations with major oil companies on six separate short term oil service deals.

The contracts involving Exxon, Mobil, Shell, Total, BP and Chevron are worth 500 million dollars each, the Oil Ministry announced last week.

Iraq hopes those short-term contracts would help boost output in the country's largest fields by 500,000 barrels a day.

Those initial contracts are expected to be awarded without competitive bidding, Oil Minister Hussein al-Shahristani said Monday.

Under the contracts, the firms will provide technical expertise and equipment for an overhaul of the country's ailing oil industry with an aging infrastructure.

Iraq wants to increase output from the current production of 2.5 million barrels per day to 4.5 million bpd over the next five years.

Iraqi reserves are estimated at about 115 billion barrels but they are largely untapped because of lack of resources to develop them.

Al-Shahristani has also announced the opening of six key oil fields to 35 foreign firms. Winners will be announced in 2009, the minister said.

"The six fields are currently in production but they need to be developed because they were established years ago," al-Shahristani said.

The contracts, though not allowing investments by foreign firms in the oil sector, pave the way for global oil giants to return to Iraq more than three decades after they were ousted by the former regime of President Saddam Hussein.

Iraq does not allow output-sharing deals with foreign firms.

"We refuse to seal output-sharing contracts because Iraq's oil will remain the property of Iraqis and under total national control although we nee foreign expertise and investment," al-Shahristani said.

Iraqi Ministry of Oil has reservations over output-sharing deals sealed by the government of the Kurdish Autonomous Region in northern Iraq.

"All oil revenues should pour into the federal fund and be divided among Iraqi provinces proportional to their population," the minister said.

Iraq's parliament is yet to ratify a controversial oil law that divides oil revenues among all parts of the country, which is strongly opposed by the increasingly independent Kurdish region. (dpa)