Qatar LNG Expansions Ensure It Stays World's Top Exporting Company - Bloomberg

Qatar LNG Expansions Ensure It Stays World's Top Exporting Company - Bloomberg
Roughly 20 countries have inked long-term deals to buy seaborne gas from state-owned QatarEnergy, with more customers likely to emerge as countries move away from oil or coal but struggle to go all in on renewables. Photo illustration: 731; Source: QatarEnergy (6); Bloomberg (1)

Qatar’s Gas Boost Will Bring Energy Dominance — and Lots of Cash

The small Gulf nation plans to snag an even bigger share of the global natural gas trade, adding more than $30 billion to its annual revenue in the process.

With a two-phase mega-expansion already underway and an enormous new buildout now on the horizon, the small Gulf nation of Qatar is setting itself up to control about a quarter of all liquefied natural gas by the end of the decade — and with it, a growing share of the world’s influence and wealth.

Qatar’s energy minister Saad Al-Kaabi unveiled last Sunday plans to boost capacity another 13% on top of its previously announced projects, together lifting the nation’s output of LNG from 77 million metric tons per year today to 142 million tons by 2030. That puts the peninsula with fewer residents than the state of Mississippi on track to produce the equivalent of about 7.25 million barrels of oil per day. Most of that will be exported, essentially matching the oil shipments from the region’s reigning energy giant, Saudi Arabia.