QatarEnergy signs 'historic' deal with Chinese state giant - Upstream Online
QatarEnergy signs 'historic' deal with Chinese state giant | Upstream Online
QatarEnergy has signed key agreements with China's state-owned Sinopec for its North Field South (NFS) liquefied natural gas expansion project.
The Qatari giant on Sunday revealed the new deals, terming the partnership in the liquefaction project as a “historic” one.
The first partnership agreement would see QatarEnergy transferring “a 5% interest to Sinopec in a joint venture company that owns the equivalent of 6 million tonnes per annum of LNG production capacity in the NFS project", QatarEnergy said.
“[This] partnership agreement is the second of its kind with Sinopec, following a similar one signed in Doha last April, which marked Sinopec’s entry as a shareholder in one of the North Field East (NFE) joint venture companies that own the NFE project,” the Qatari company noted.
In addition to the partnership deal, the two companies on Sunday also signed a long-term sales and purchase agreement for the delivery of 3 million tpa of LNG from the NFS project to Sinopec’s receiving terminals in China for 27 years.
QatarEnergy chief executive Saad Sherida Al Kaabi said that “a stronger relationship between the world’s largest LNG producer (Qatar) and the world’s largest energy consumer (China) is a natural development of the realities shaping the energy map".
Al Kaabi noted that by 2029, about 40% of all new global LNG supplies would be provided by Qatar.
North Field expansion
The tiny emirate is expanding its LNG production capacity to an ultimate 126 million tpa in the next three years.
The emirate currently has a liquefaction capacity of 77 million tpa that is currently being expanded to 110 million tpa through the project's first expansion phase, termed NFE.
The NFS project represents the second expansion phase of Qatar’s massive North field, which will increase Qatar’s total nameplate liquefaction capacity to 126 million tpa.
Together the two expansion phases will likely cost Qatar upwards of $50 billion.
NFS partners
US energy major ConocoPhillips, UK supermajor Shell and French giant TotalEnergies were last year awarded key participating stakes in the NFS project.
Qatar’s engineering and construction market is buzzing with activity, with potentially more than $15 billion-worth of oil and gas contracts already awarded this year, as the country continues to press ahead with strategic expansion projects.
QatarEnergy in May awarded a $10 billion contract to a grouping of France’s Technip Energies and Middle East-based Consolidated Contractors Company (CCC) for work on the giant liquefaction trains required for the NFS expansion project.
The award comprises two LNG trains with a combined capacity of 16 million tpa, making it one of the largest engineering, procurement and construction deals in the Middle East this year.
QatarEnergy also awarded a $560 million contract in August to Spanish contractor Tecnicas Reunidas for additional NFS onshore surface facilities, including pipelines, interconnections, ancillary systems and other supporting components for the LNG off-plot facilities.
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