A joint bid by Malaysia's Petronas and Japan's Japex was awarded a contract on Saturday to work on the Garraf oil field in southern Iraq, Oil Minister Hussein al-Shahristani said.

The pair had requested 1.49 dollars per barrel of oil extracted from the reservoir and projected output at 230,000 barrels of oil per day (bpd).

Petronas will take 60 percent while Japex will take the remaining 40 percent.

They beat out three other offers -- a joint bid from Turkey's TPAO and India's ONGC; a consortium made up of Kazakhstan's KazMunaiGas, South Korea's KoGas and Italy's Edison and a bid from Indonesia's Pertamina.