The field was named Majnoon which means crazy in Arabic in reference to excessive amount of oil in a dense area.

[2] The field was discovered by Braspetro, a Brazilian company in 1975, under the leadership of Bolivar Montenegro Guerra in a shallow Upper Cretaceous formation.

In the1990's, Total S.A. of France negotiated a development contract with Saddam Hussein but was unable to sign the deal due to United Nations sanctions imposed on Iraq.

[3] On December 11, 2009, the Iraqi government awarded a license to a joint venture from Royal Dutch Shell and Petronas to take over operations at Majnoon Oilfield, and triple production from the estimated reserve of nearly 12.6 billion barrels (2.00×109 m3) at a fee rate of $1.39/barrel.

In April 2018, Chinese company Anton Oilfield Services[10] signed an Integrated Facilities Management Services Contract (IFMS) with Iraq's oil ministry, a two-year deal with a one-year extension option, to operate maintenance and production of the Majnoon field on behalf of Basra Oil Company.

[2] The contract with Shell and Petronas included drilling over 40 production wells, construction of three gas separation stations and two crude oil processing refineries with overall capacity of 100,000 barrels per day (16,000 m3/d).

[1][14] In 2010 it was claimed that the production at Majnoon would move Iraq from the 11th place to the 3rd among oil producing nations after only Saudi Arabia and Iran.