Petroleum minister Murli Deora is expected to seek oilfields from Iraq when he meets his counterpart Hussein al-Shahristani in the joint working group meeting in the capital on Friday.

Petroleum Ministry sources told The Indian Express that the IOC-OIL consortium is interested in seeking oil fields in Iraq and Deora is expected to discuss this issue. India has presence in Iraq, with ONGC Videsh’s (OVL) onshore Block 8 (awarded to it by the deposed Saddam Hussein regime.) However, the work has not started yet in this oil field due to security reasons. OVL along with Reliance Industries and Algerian Sonatrach is seeking an enlargement of its assets in Iraq in the Tuba oil field.

Iraq has proven oil reserves of 112 billion barrels, second only to world’s largest oil nation Saudi Arabia.

“They want our help in building refineries. When I met Al-Shahristani in Riyadh earlier this month, he wanted our companies to build a 8-10 million tonne refinery,” Deora had said earlier. Deora is also expected to root for higher imports of Basra Light crude for state refineries HPCL, IOC and BPCL.