UPDATE 4-Occidental Q3 tops Wall St, lifted by California find

* Q3 EPS $1.14 tops Wall St view of $1.08

* Sees Q4 at 650,000-660,000 boepd, boosted by Calif find

* Eyes share of peak production from Zubair at 90,000 bpd

* Shares rise 3 pct to best close for more than a year (Add executive and analyst comments, closing share price)

SAN FRANCISCO/NEW YORK, Oct 22 (Reuters) - Occidental Petroleum Corp (OXY.N) posted a 60 percent profit drop as oil prices fell from record highs in 2008, but the fourth-largest U.S. oil company beat analysts' estimates and its stock rose 3 percent.

Occidental gave a 90,000 barrel-per-day (bpd) estimate for its net share of peak production at Iraq's Zubair field, a project awarded this month that Oxy expects to plateau at about a million bpd in the next six years.

"We have to get the agreement buttoned down," Chief Executive Ray Irani told analysts on a conference call. "I doubt that you're going to see any meaningful production out of Iraq showing up on Oxy next year, but I think 2011 ... it will build up."

Italy's Eni (ENI.MI), leader of the Zubair consortium that also includes South Korea's KOGAS (036460.KS), has estimated the project cost at $10 billion in a newspaper interview.

Irani said Oxy would shoulder 25 percent to 30 percent of the costs, though Abu Dhabi's Mubadala is negotiating to share its stake, and other partners may come along. [ID:nN22251113]

Oxy, which also this month said it would buy the Phibro commodity trading unit from Citigroup (C.N), said on Thursday third-quarter profit fell to $927 million, or $1.14 per share, from $2.3 billion, or $2.77 per share, a year earlier.

Analysts had expected earnings of $1.08 per share, according to Thomson Reuters I/B/E/S.

Benchmark U.S. crude futures CLc1 averaged $68 per barrel in the third quarter, up from nearly $60 in the second, but far below the $118 average in the year-earlier quarter when prices peaked above $147.

The decline in prices pushed quarterly earnings in Oxy's oil and gas segment down 60 percent to $1.46 billion, while chemicals segment earnings slumped 67 percent to $72 million.

GROWN NEAR HOME

Oxy's oil and gas sales volumes averaged 628,000 barrels of oil equivalent per day (boepd) in the third quarter, up from 588,000 boepd a year ago, and the company sees that growing to between 650,000 and 660,000 boepd this quarter.

The production has been boosted by the Los Angeles-based company's huge find of mostly natural gas in central California, announced in July, where it has 10 producing wells and aims to drill 11 more this year.

"Kern County, California, production growth has been impressive, single-handedly accounting for an annualized 5 to 6 percent to Oxy's worldwide production growth over the past six months," Simmons & Co analysts wrote in a note to clients.

The company also said it will close several-hundred-million dollars worth of property acquisitions this quarter, indicating it would be around its existing properties in California and the Permian basin in the U.S. Southwest.

Shares of Occidental rose 3 percent to $84, their highest closing price in more than a year. The stock has rallied 40 percent in 2009, compared with a 20 percent gain for the Chicago Board Options Exchange index of oil companies .OIX, (Reporting by Braden Reddall in San Francisco and Matt Daily in New York; Editing by Lisa Von Ahn, Gunna Dickson and Steve Orlofsky)