South Korea's Daewoo Engineering & Construction has won a $709 million service contract to develop Iraq's largest gas field in the western province of Anbar, the cabinet secretary said on Monday.

Daewoo will handle engineering, procurement and construction work for the processing facility and pipeline network at the Akkas gas field, which has reserves of 5.6 trillion cubic feet, Ali al-Alaq told Reuters.

Iraq signed a contract in 2011 to develop the western Akkas gas field, near the Syrian border, with South Korea's KOGAS for a fee of $5.50 per barrel of oil equivalent and a production target of 400 million cubic feet per day over 13 years.

Iraq, holder of the world's 10th largest gas reserves, has said the priority for the gas will be domestic consumption, mainly for power generation, but has left open the possibility of allowing exports once domestic needs are satisfied.

Soran Ali