Doha 03 Jan. 2018
‘Two LNG companies have merged into a single LNG operating company from 1st January 2018, and all the ventures that were operated by Qatargas and RasGas will now be operated by the new QatarGas,” Sa’ad Sherida Al Kaabi, QP President and CEO said at a press conference this morning. Al Ka’abi announced Sheikh Khaild bin Khalifa al Thani will be the CEO of the new company.
“Qatargas will be the single entity exporting Qatari LNG to the world, under one shared vision, one management system, and one work culture,” Al Ka’abi said. The new entity will have a production capacity of 77 million tonnes of LNG per annum from its combined 14 LNG trains.
He told that from merger of both the LNG firms, annual operating cost of QR 2 billion will be saved. There are seven operating companies that have joint ventures with oil majors – ExxonMobil, while, Total, Shell, ConocoPhillips, and five Asian firms hold minority stakes in the 14 LNG trains.
He said the aims from integration is to create a unique global energy operator in terms of size, service and reliability and also create higher value for stakeholders by enhancing the competitive position of the Qatari gas industry.
Talking on Qatar’s North Field expansion, QP President & CEO said that ‘We are in the initial engineering phase of designing for expansion. That’s going full steam ahead. It has nothing to do with the partnerships and the structure of how we are going to form the joint venture or who the partner is. That’s also being worked in parallel’.
Al-Kaabi said, “As you would expect, all companies in the world that are based either here in Qatar or outside and interested in expanding in liquefied natural gas are knocking on QP’s doors. That’s being looked at and evaluated. We will make a decision at the right time as to who our partners are. There could be multiple partners, because this is a big development’.
Qatar’s plan is to develop an export-oriented gas project in the North Field. However, Qatar Petroleum has not yet decided if exports will be in the form of LNG, GTL or pipeline gas.
Sa’ad Sherida Al Kaabi, President & CEO of Qatar Petroleum said ‘I see a very rosy picture in the energy market going forward, We see gas growth is continuing for a very long future with no real peak gas, if you want to call it that. We have absolutely no doubt that we will continue investing in gas, because the future is gas. We are hearing a lot about electric cars but to generate electricity, we need gas. Electricity does not come out of the air. So we are not worried at all.”
He said, ‘We have made huge investments in developing the LNG industry here and growing rapidly- externally. Externally, we are growing in a big way’. ‘Certainly, there is a glut in the market currently. But we are talking about projects in the five to seven years horizon, where we expect a big demand for energy’.
Al-Kaabi told that Qatar Petroleum is interested in investing in the upstream business of the Iraq’s energy sector. We are interested in developing Iraq’s upstream business in the energy sector, if invited to do so. We are looking at the best ways of entering that market,” Al-Kaabi said.
At the conclusion of his remarks, Saad Sherida AlKa’abi extended sincere thanks and appreciation to all the buyers of Qatari gas around the world for their trust and confidence in Qatar Petroleum and in State of Qatar, assuring them that Qatar will do its utmost to ensure the continued safe and reliable LNG delivery to their friendly countries.
He thanked all management teams from Qatar Petroleum, its int’l partners, QatarGas and RasGas for their contributions in creation of the new Qatargas.
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