* MPs summon oil minister to answer questions
* Fixed-fee service contracts in question
* Oil Ministry says moving "full steam ahead"
(Recasts, adds details, background)
By Waleed Ibrahim and Ahmed Rasheed
BAGHDAD, June 16 (Reuters) - Iraq's oil ministry vowed on Tuesday to auction service contracts in prized oilfields to foreign companies at the end of June, despite the minister being summoned by lawmakers to answer questions about the deals.
Oil Minister Hussain al-Shahristani and senior executives from Iraq's South Oil Co. and the Iraq Drilling Company will appear before parliament next Tuesday, said Shatha al-Musawi, a legislator with the ruling Shi'ite alliance.
The summons came after South Oil Co. head Fayad al-Nema, whose unit produces the bulk of Iraq's 2.3-2.4 million bpd of crude, told Reuters he objected to the first round of contracts and had urged Shahristani to cancel the bidding.
Musawi said oil experts had described the first round of fixed-fee service contracts, due to be handed out on June 29-30, as a waste of Iraqi money because they involved oilfields in which Iraq had invested heavily since the 2003 U.S. invasion.
"They said Iraq so far had spent around $8 billion to rehabilitate these fields ... they said it is not reasonable after all this money and all the development undertaken that foreign companies should take these fields and share Iraq's production," she said.
"For this reason, parliament decided to host the oil minister and those oil experts in a special session and to hear from all of them."
Nevertheless, the Petroleum Contracts and Licenses Directorate of the Oil Ministry said it was moving "full steam ahead" with its plans for the first round auction.
"Today, we received the green light from the cabinet to go ahead and announce the first bidding round on schedule, without any delay or change," Abdul Mahdy al-Ameedi, the deputy director general of the directorate, told Reuters later on Tuesday.
Government spokesman Ali al-Dabbagh said the cabinet was committed to executing the first bidding round as scheduled.
"SUPER GIANTS"
The fixed-fee service contracts represent Iraq's first big push in three decades for foreign investment in its oilfields, which hold the world's third-largest crude reserves.
Thirty-two of the world's biggest energy companies have qualified and paid fees to take part.
They include London-listed BP and Royal Dutch Shell, U.S. firms Chevron and Exxon Mobil, Russia's Gazprom and Lukoil, China's CNOOC, and Malaysia's state-owned Petronas.
Northern Iraq's semi-autonomous Kurdish authorities have signed development deals with around 30 private companies, but Baghdad considers those agreements illegal.
The first round of service contracts involve older oilfields, most classed as "super giants" with 5 billion barrels or more of reserves, that are already producing. Musawi said they account for some 80 percent of current national output.
A second round of tenders, the results of which are expected at the end of the year, involve undeveloped oilfields.
Musawi said the experts told parliament they did not object to the second round of contracts for foreign oil companies. Nema said the same in his interview with Reuters.
The summons by parliament was not linked to separate moves by members of parliament's oil and gas committee to quiz Shahristani over the oil ministry's inability, to date, to restore oil output to the level it was at before the invasion.
Musawi said lawmakers wanted Shahristani to explain the benefits of the first round of contracts. They also wanted a clarification about the deals, which she said looked more like production sharing agreements than fixed-fee service contracts. (Writing by Michael Christie and Daniel Wallis; editing by James Jukwey)