Houston. Engineering services company Halliburton announced it was awarded a contract from Italian energy company Eni to start work at the Zubair oil field in Iraq.Halliburton said it had started work on the multimillion-dollar contract at the southern Iraqi oil field already. The company said it would work on as many as 20 wells at the field.

Bagdah. Sterling provided the following update on its activities: Sangaw North Exploration Well. The repairs to the Sakson drilling rig have now been completed and the rig has resumed operations. Sterling's plan is to continue testing the prospectivity of the Sangaw North #1 exploration well previously identified from the wire-line log data and drilling shows over the open-hole interval of 1,450m to 2,395m.

Sanaa. A number of petroleum companies closed down earlier this week after receiving direct Al-Qaeda threats, independent sources reported.

Abu Dhabi. The Kuwait Oil Tanker Company (KOTC) intends to sign a Kuwaiti Dinar 45.5 million (USD 189 million) contract for the design and construction of a liquefied natural gas (LNG) plant north of the country, it was announced here on Monday.