A joint venture between Shell and Petronas has won a development contract for the Majnoon oil field in Iraq.

A joint venture between Royal Dutch Shell and Petronas Carigali has been awarded a contract by the Iraqi Ministry for Oil to develop the Majnoon field in Iraq.

The Iraqi government has awarded Shell and Petronas a 45% and 30% share respectively, with the Iraq Ministry for Oil retaining a 25% share in the development contract.

Majnoon is an island in southern Iraq and is home to one of the largest oil fields in the world; however following United Nations (UN) sanctions and the Iraq war, production has been limited to 46,000 barrels per day.

The consortium says they would raise the oil production to 1.8 million barrels per day.

Although the deal is still subject to ratification by the Iraqi authorities, in a statement released by the two companies, they said: “Shell and Petronas look forward to developing this world class resource base with its partners.”

The joint venture of Shell and Petronas beat a rival bid from France’s Total and a Chinese consortium, CNPC. However, according to reports, CNPC was awarded a contract to develop Iraq’s Halfaya oil field, which is estimated to have reserves of around 5 billion barrels.

Malaysian-based Petronas, is wholly owned by the government and according to Fortune magazine, it is the 8th most profitable company in the world.

Shell, whose headquarters are based in the Netherlands, is the largest company in the world, according to Fortune, but has suffered during the past year after reporting a drop in profits of 73% for the three months to September.