KUWAIT - Kuwait Oil Company has signed contracts worth $1.73 billion linked to rehabilitating the soil of oilfields damaged during Iraq's invasion of Kuwait, according to a document seen by Reuters.

The contracts are for "rehabilitation, treatment, drilling, transportation, and backfilling, covering all affected areas and areas to be rehabilitated within the oilfields," Oil Minister Saad Al-Barrak said in response to a parliamentary query, according to the document, which is dated Oct. 4.

The document did not name the entities KOC signed the contracts with.

Iraq in February last year completed the payment of $52.4 billion to compensate individuals, companies and governments who proved damages due to its 1990 invasion and occupation of Kuwait.

The United Nations Compensation Commission (UNCC), set up by the U.N. Security Council after the seven-month occupation of the emirate and U.S.-led defeat of Saddam Hussein's troops in the Gulf War, received a portion of the proceeds from Iraqi oil sales for the compensation.

About 78% of the total went to Kuwait, according to UNCC, including the largest of more than 1.5 million successful claims - $14.7 billion in damages incurred by the Kuwait Petroleum Corporation (KPC), KOC's parent, after departing Iraqi troops set fire to oil wells.

Roughly $4.3 billion of the total claims related to environmental remediation and restoration was awarded to the governments of Iran, Jordan, Kuwait and Saudi Arabia, according to UNCC.

The budget allocated by the U.N. to rehabilitate the Kuwaiti environment was about $3 billion, Al-Barrak, the minister, said in the document.

About $281 million of the $1.73 billion was disbursed through September 2023, he said. KOC will sign greening contracts to restore vegetation cover in 2024, he added.

The projects, scheduled to be completed in 2027-2028, are "one of the largest projects in the field of soil remediation in the world at the present time," Al-Barrak said.

KOC began working on the projects in 2013 under UNCC's Kuwait Environmental Remediation Program, he said.

(Reporting by Ahmed Hagagy; Editing by Yousef Saba and Sharon Singleton)