Qatar pushing ahead with LNG expansion despite slumping demand | Financial Times:
Qatar is forging ahead with the expansion of the world’s largest liquefied natural gas project and eyeing investment opportunities overseas despite a slump in global energy demand and the collapse of oil prices.
Saad al-Kaabi, the country’s energy minister and chief executive of Qatar Petroleum, said commercial bids for the project in the North Field, the planet’s biggest natural gasfield, would be delayed because of the Covid-19 pandemic but insisted that all contracts would be awarded by the end of the year.
“The North Field expansion project is moving full steam ahead, no delay there. The only issue is because of Covid and suppliers and so on,” Mr Kaabi said in a briefing with the US-Qatar Business Council. “In my view, you continue your plan and invest in the bad times because these projects are long term.”
The project will increase Qatar’s production capacity from 77m tonnes of LNG per annum to 110m by 2025, which could rise to 126m tonnes two years later. The move should help the small Gulf state regain the title of the world’s top LNG producer from Australia at a time when other projects have been thrown into doubt by the pandemic.
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| The North Field, which lies north-east off the Qatar peninsula, is the biggest natural gasfield in the world © Qatargas |
Qatar is forging ahead with the expansion of the world’s largest liquefied natural gas project and eyeing investment opportunities overseas despite a slump in global energy demand and the collapse of oil prices.
Saad al-Kaabi, the country’s energy minister and chief executive of Qatar Petroleum, said commercial bids for the project in the North Field, the planet’s biggest natural gasfield, would be delayed because of the Covid-19 pandemic but insisted that all contracts would be awarded by the end of the year.
“The North Field expansion project is moving full steam ahead, no delay there. The only issue is because of Covid and suppliers and so on,” Mr Kaabi said in a briefing with the US-Qatar Business Council. “In my view, you continue your plan and invest in the bad times because these projects are long term.”
The project will increase Qatar’s production capacity from 77m tonnes of LNG per annum to 110m by 2025, which could rise to 126m tonnes two years later. The move should help the small Gulf state regain the title of the world’s top LNG producer from Australia at a time when other projects have been thrown into doubt by the pandemic.
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