Additional crude oil production from Qatar's offshore Al-Shaheen field was expected to come online in the first quarter of 2010, an executive at Maersk Oil Qatar said on Monday.

'We are more than 90 per cent finished...We think by January, February next year...we will start our oil from this development,' Faisal al-Thani, senior director and head of business development at Maersk Oil Qatar said in a presentation at an oil and gas conference in Dammam.

Al-Thani later clarified to Reuters that production would start anytime in the first quarter, but declined to say what the new production levels at the field would be.

'We are doing reservoir studies and we will know when we finish those studies how much we will produce,' he said.

Maersk invested $6.2 billion on the project as it has already drilled 120 wells out of 160 and has 15 platforms, al-Thani told the conference.-Reuters