Lukoil awarded contract to develop oil field in Iraq.

MOSCOW, December 13 (Itar-Tass) - Mikhail Margelov, the head of the
Federation Council Committee for Foreign Affairs, told Itar-Tass on
Saturday that the victory of a Lukoil-led consortium in the bidding for
the development of the West Qurna-2 oil field shows that the Russian
company was highly competitive.

Margelov said that Iraqi government was planning to increase oil
production in future and added that Lukoil's win had disproved all the
forecasts according to which the United States would block the access of
third countries to Iraq's oil resources.
The fact that Lukoil will now operate one of the biggest Iraqi
oilfields is evidence of normal relations between the Iraqi leadership and
Russia, Margelov said.
A Lukoil-led consortium has won a contract for developing one out of
15 oil fields put up for the bidding. The West Qurna-2 deposit harbors
12.9 billion barrels of oil. The consortium, including Lukoil (85%) and
the Norwegian oil and gas giant "StatoilHydro" (15%) will earn 1.15
dollars from a barrel of extracted oil.

.Preliminary results of Abkhazian election to be announced.

SUKHUM, December 13 (Itar-Tass) - Preliminary results of the
presidential elections in Abkhazia are to be announced by midday on Sunday.
According to the most recent reports of the Abkhazian Central
Electoral Commission the turnout had been 64.29 percent thirty minutes
before the polling stations were closed. It means that the elections can
be recognized as valid. This time the Abkhazian voters were even more
active than at presidential elections of 2005 when the turnout was 63
percent. All international observers noted long queues at the polling
stations. In some places people had to line up until evening.
Despite the fact that the local Central Electoral Commission hasn't
published any official election results as of yet, sources at the election
headquarters of all candidates are giving the first assessments.
The election headquarters of Abkhazia's incumbent President Sergei
Bagapsh claims that he has a strong lead in practically all the
constituencies. They said that one of the constituencies had given 1,200
votes for Bagapsh and 200 votes to the runner-up candidate. Even in his
native village the candidate Zaur Ardzinba was just 22 votes ahead of
Bagapsh.
Out of 1,113 voters at a polling station located in school No.10 in
Sukhum, 683 voted for Bagapsh and 243 for his chief rival Raul Khadzhimba.
IA league of voters called "For Honest Elections" believes that
Bagapsh is winning in all the 35 constituencies. The league sent more than
a hundred monitors to Abkhazian polling stations.
In the meantime, Raul Khadzhimba, a candidate in Abkhazia's
presidential elections and Sergei Bagapsh's chief rival, told a news
conference on Saturday that breaches and violations had been revealed at
several polling stations.
He said the number of voters in additional lists was the same or even
exceeded the number of voters included in the main list. Khadzhimba didn't
rule out that he might demand that voting at those polling stations be
recognized as invalid.
Khadzhimba also said a second round of elections was possible. He told
Itar-Tass that other opposition candidates were sure to support him.
International observers are expected to give their conclusions on
Sunday. On Saturday, several Russian State Duma deputies said that the
presidential elections in Abkhazia had passed without violations with a
high voter turnout. For their part, observers from the Russian Federation
Council said the polls had been democratic and had been held at a high
level.

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