BAGHDAD - Iraq has activated a contract with BP to develop Kirkuk oilfields, targeting preliminary production of 328,000 barrels per day, the country's oil minister said on Thursday. The contract sets an initial production target of 328,000 barrels per day, with further increases expected through field development, Iraq's oil minister Hayan Abdel-Ghani said in a statement. "Setting the initial production rate at 328,000 barrels per day marks the launch of the contract, and any increase beyond that will come through development operations," he said. The energy major was a member of the consortium of oil companies that discovered oil in Kirkuk in the 1920s. BP has estimated that the Kirkuk field holds about 9 billion barrels of recoverable oil.