BAGHDAD: An Iraqi oil official says U.S. oilfield services company Weatherford International Ltd., has won a $224.4-million contract to drill in southern Iraq.The official with the state-run Maysan Oil Co. said Wednesday the Houston-based company has 24 months to drill 20 wells in the southern Buzurgan oil field in Maysan province.The official, speaking on condition of anonymity because he was not authorized to comment, said the wells will boost current the field's current output of 80,000 barrels per day by at least 40 percent.The deal - ratified Tuesday by the Iraqi Cabinet - is part of an accelerated plan to raise Iraq's output from its current level of 2.4 million barrels per day by 2010.Maysan is about 200 miles (320 kilometers) southeast of Baghdad.
BAGHDAD: Nearly 500 U.S. Army combat engineers who specialize in clearing roads of explosives started shifting to southern Afghanistan."We are probably going to be the beginning of the influx you are going to see to Afghanistan," Lt. Col. Kevin Landers, commander of the Fort Carson, Colo.-based 4th Engineer Battalion, said as crews packed crates and cleaned vehicles for the flight to Kandahar.Obama has ordered 17,000 more U.S. soldiers and Marines to Afghanistan to bolster the 38,000 American troops already battling the resurgent Taliban."We are going to take this footprint out of Iraq," said Landers, whose battalion received word of its reassignment last month just after taking command of clearing roads in Baghdad of bombs and debris.
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