Russian oil producer Gazprom Neft announced on Thursday an increase in the production capacity at one of the fields it operates in the Kurdistan Region.

The company said its operations at Kurdistan’s Sarqala field rose by 25 percent following the launch of a third production well. The collective growth at the field is now 35,000 barrels of oil per day (bpd).

According to Gazprom, it plans to produce 1.2 million tons at Sarqala by the end of the year.

Gazprom Neft, Russia's third-largest oil producer, began operating in Iraq in 2010, in the southern province of Wasit. In the summer of 2012, the company entered into two other projects in Iraq.

The first was a product-sharing agreement with the Kurdistan Regional Government (KRG) for both the Garmian (where Sarqala is located) and Shakal blocks. In 2013, the company signed an additional deal for the Halabja block.

In late May, another Russian oil firm, Rosneft, announced it had signed an agremeent with the KRG to develop its oil and gas infrastructure, including the design of a new gas pipeline that boosted oil production in the Kurdistan Region up to 10,000 bpd by the end of 2018. 

There are 57 oil blocks in the Kurdistan Region, ten of them located in Garmian.