Iraqi Oil Minister Hussein al-Shahristani addresses journalists during a press conference in this... 
(ALI AL-SAADI/AFP/Getty Images)
China and Iraq have signed a $3 billion deal revising a prewar agreement for China's biggest oil company to help develop the Ahdab oil field, an official at the Iraq's Oil Ministry said Thursday.
The deal, restoring a project canceled after the 2003 U.S.-led invasion of Iraq, was signed late Wednesday by Chinese officials and Iraqi Oil Minister Hussain al-Shahristani.
"The initial agreement has been signed, and we are waiting to see the approval of both governments," said Sarhad Fatah, a spokesman at the Iraqi Embassy in Beijing.
Fatah would not disclose the value of the deal, but an official at the Oil Ministry in Baghdad confirmed it would be worth $3 billion. He requested anonomity because the agreement hasn't been approved by the cabinet yet.
Major oil companies have been reluctant to commit to deals in Iraq because Baghdad has yet to enact a law to govern the oil industry.
The government of former Iraqi President Saddam Hussein signed a deal in 1997 with China's oil company, government-owned China National Petroleum Corp. It was to take effect once U.N. sanctions on Iraq's oil industry were lifted.
That contract, worth $1.2 billion at the time, gave a subsidiary of the Chinese company concessions to develop the field on a production-sharing basis for 22 years.
A CNPC spokesman, Liu Weijiang, said Thursday that he could not provide any information on the new agreement.
If it is approved, the agreement would be the first Saddam-era oil deal to be honored by the new Iraqi government.
A number of companies say they signed deals with Saddam's regime and demand that those be honored, or the countries involved be given priority on new agreements.
But the Iraqi statement said that some technical services contracts with other big petroleum companies might be postponed.
Iraq's Oil Ministry has consistently denied giving any advantage to companies with which Saddam signed deals, instead insisting that oil and gas fields and exploration blocks will be offered up for bids.
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