Qatar Builds The Biggest Carbon Capture Plant In The Middle East

The world’s top liquefied natural gas (LNG) exporter Qatar has recently commissioned the largest carbon dioxide (CO2) recovery and sequestration facility in the Middle East and North African region, Saad Sherida Al-Kaabi, Qatar’s Minister of State for Energy Affairs, told the Oil & Money Conference in London on Tuesday.

The facility at Ras Laffan is planned to have a capacity of 2.1 million tons of CO2 per year.

“With such new Carbon Capture and Storage projects, Qatar’s LNG industry will be capturing and sequestering more than 5 million tons of CO2 per annum by 2025,” said Al-Kaabi, who is also the president and chief executive officer at state-run company Qatar Petroleum.

Qatar is committed to support global security of energy supplies, while at the same time tackling global environmental challenges, Al-Kaabi said at the Oil & Money Conference, touting Qatar’s LNG and natural gas as the fuel of the energy transition.

Qatar also plans to use CO2 for enhanced oil recovery (EOR), the official said at the conference.

Qatar is not worried about oversupply or low natural gas prices in the mid-2020s, Qatar just competes with itself, and it wants to be the lowest-cost producer, Al-Kaabi said.

“We expect to have the cheapest LNG. I worry about capital cost, operating cost -- nothing else,” he added.

Qatar has announced plans to increase its LNG production capacity by 43 percent—from 77 million tons annually now to 110 million tons a year by 2024. The Middle Eastern country, however, will have to compete with Australia and the United States over the next few years for the world’s top LNG exporter title.

Until Qatar raises its LNG export capacity, LNG facilities in Australia are ramping up production and exports and reach full capacity, which will result in Australia consistently exporting more LNG than Qatar within the next year, the U.S. Energy Information Administration (EIA) said in August.

Australia will be the next top LNG exporter, but it will likely retain that title for a brief period of time as both Qatar and the United States plan major expansions in their LNG export capacities over the next five years.

By Tsvetana Paraskova for Oilprice.com

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