Iraq's oil industry will need two years of rehabilitation after any US-led war to generate a significant increase in crude production capacity, experts say.

Iraqi production could be boosted to 3 million barrels per day (bpd) by 2005, said Martin Purvis, of international oil consultants Wood Mackenzie. Iraq's current sustainable production is estimated at 2.8 million bpd.

Purvis predicted that by 2012 production from Iraq, which has the world's second largest proven oil reserves behind Saudi Arabia, could be hiked to 6 million bpd.

"Iraq has only exploited a few of its largest discoveries and there are many, many fields that remain largely untouched," he said.

A short-term rebound in Iraq's production will depend on whether Iraqi President Saddam Hussein torches his own oilfields in any military conflict. After the 1990-91 Gulf War, it took about two years to get Kuwait's oilfields back to normal after Iraqi forces set its oilfields on fire.

The first energy companies to come to Iraq after a war - damage to oil wells or not - would be oil service companies, said JJ Traynor, analyst at Deutsche Bank.

After that, longer-term oil reconstruction would be carried out by large oil companies who are more leveraged to take on risk, Traynor added.

There is sure to be much jockeying between companies which have signed contracts with Saddam Hussein's government, including Russia's Lukoil and France's TotalFinaElf , and US oil companies who have not signed contracts.

Lukoil still hopes to develop Iraq's huge West Qurna oilfield even though Baghdad cancelled its contract in December in a diplomatic snub to Moscow.

"Lukoil seems to have the tightest contracts with their project at the West Qurna field," said Traynor. "They at least claim that it would be testable against international law in a regime change scenario."

Other companies such as TotalFinaElf and Italian energy giant Eni may have an advantage at any negotiations with a future government since they have already done a great deal of technical work, said Traynor.

But US and foreign companies that do not have existing contracts will have to decide whether they want to sign fresh contracts with the next government or partner with companies that do.

"I'm sure BP ExxonMobil, ChevronTexaco, ConocoPhillips and Occidental are all waiting in the wings to negotiate deals," Traynor said.

Though Iraq could increase production after the UN removes sanctions, it might then have to jockey for position with fellow members of the Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries.

"Would OPEC be able to handle (a six-million-barrel increase by 2012)? The jury still out on that," said Amy Myers Jaffe, energy advisor at the Houston-based Baker Institute for Public Policy at Rice University.

From 1996 to 2001, Iraqi production has accounted for 30% of global oil supply growth.

That means Iraqi output has been an important marginal supply of of the existing world oil market since the United Nations crafted the oil-for-food program in 1995, according to Jaffe.