MOSCOW (Dow Jones) -- OAO Lukoil, Russia's largest independent oil producer, Friday said it has reached an agreement to take control of eight gas fields in Uzbekistan.

Lukoil said in a statement that it would buy a group of companies including SoyuzNefteGaz Vostok Ltd., a signatory to the Production Sharing Agreement for the South-Western Guissar and Ustyurtsk Region fields in Uzbekistan.
The deal gives Lukoil access an estimated 100 billion cubic meters of C1 category gas reserves, according to Uzbekistan's State Committee for Reserves.
The company expects to reach yearly production of about 3 billion cubic meters of gas by 2012.
Lukoil said the agreement will last for 36 years and requires investment of around $700 million. MGNK SoyuzNefteGaz, from which it acquired the assets, has already invested more than $70 million.
Friday's deal is the company's second in Uzbekistan in recent months. In November, Lukoil began producing at the huge Khauzak gas field, a project that is expected to contribute a fifth of the Central Asian state's gas output.
Khauzak, which contains 80 billion cubic meters of gas, is part of the wider Kandym-Khauzak-Shady-Kungrad project, developed jointly by Lukoil, with a 90% stake, and state-owned UzbekNefteGaz.
""Uzbekistan is one of Lukoil's most important regions outside Russia and widening our business here fully meets our long-term strategic goals,"" Lukoil Chief Executive Vagit Alekperov said.
Lukoil, part-owned by U.S. giant ConocoPhillips (COP), produced 13.96 billion cubic meters of natural and associated gas in 2007, up 2.5% on the previous year.