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Business / Qatar Business

QP’s LNG expansion evokes huge interest from global companies

Published: 23 Jun 2021 - 09:51 am | Last Updated: 28 Dec 2021 - 11:39 am
Peninsula

Sachin Kumar | The Peninsula

Qatar’s Liquefied Natural Gas (LNG) expansion project has evoked huge response from global energy companies. The Minister of State for Energy Affairs, the President and CEO of Qatar Petroleum, H E Saad Sherida Al Kaabi said yesterday that Qatar has received double the bids it was seeking for the project. 

Royal Dutch Shell PLC, TotalEnergies SE and ExxonMobil Corporation are among the companies that submitted bids to partner on the project

“Bids are double, what we requested whether it’s sales and purchase agreements (SPA) or equity. So there is great interest. I think it is a big part of it is due to carbon sequestration and gas being part of the solution for the future,” said the Minister during a session on the second day of Qatar Economic Forum, Powered by Bloomberg.

Patrick Pouyanné, Chairman of the Board and CEO, TotalEnergies; Ben van Beurden, CEO, Royal Dutch Shell; Darren Woods, Chairman and CEO, ExxonMobil Corporation also took part in the session. 

The country has embarked on an ambitious LNG capacity expansion plan. The two-phase North Field Expansion project will see Qatar LNG capacity to increase from 77 million tonnes per annum (mtpa) to 126 mtpa by 2027, showing an increase of around 64 percent. The first phase of expansion will include expansion of LNG capacity from 77 mtpa to 110 mtpa by 2025 while the second phase will take LNG capacity to 126 mtpa by 2027.

“We started a very long time ago decarbonising LNG and we have currently as we speak we sequestering 2 million tonnees a day of CO2, and with plan for the North Field Expansion, as we have announced in the past, by 2030 we will reach around 9 million tonnes of CO2 that will be sequestered,” said the Minister. 

Early this year in January, Qatar Petroleum had launched its new Sustainability Strategy, which sets a roadmap for a sustainable and more prosperous future for Qatar and the world.

The new Strategy establishes a number of targets in alignment with the goals of the Paris Agreement, and sets in motion a plan to reduce greenhouse gas emissions by 2030. It stipulates deploying dedicated Carbon Capture and Storage (CCS) facilities to capture more than 7 million tonnes per annum of CO2 in Qatar.

The Strategy also acts as a clear direction towards reducing the emissions intensity of Qatar’s LNG facilities by 25 percent and of its upstream facilities by at least 15 percent, and reducing flare intensity across upstream facilities by more than 75 percent. Furthermore, it sets out a target to eliminate routine flaring by 2030, and limit fugitive methane emissions along the gas value chain by setting a methane intensity target of 0.2 percent across all facilities by 2025.