Heritage Oil said it discovered a major gasfield but not oil in the Kurdistan region of Iraq, pulling down shares in the company.

'The fact that they struck gas isn't seen as a positive at all,' one trader was quoted as saying in a report in our sister newspaper Gulf Daily News.

'It makes the whole area a little less commercial.'

Heritage Oil, which has a 75 per cent interest in the field, said it was targeting first production in 2015 and studying options such as bringing the gas into Europe via the Nabucco pipeline.

'The discovery of a major gas field of up to 12.3 trillion cubic feet of gas in place with exceptional flow rates makes this one of the largest gasfields to be discovered in Iraq,' chief executive Tony Buckingham said.