QatarEnergy, the state giant of one of the world's top liquefied natural gas exporters, expects to soon announce new LNG supply agreements with European and Asian buyers as it is working on the world's largest LNG export capacity expansion.
QatarEnergy could also sign additional agreements to welcome more partners in the joint ventures that will operate the expanded capacities at the North Field, QatarEnergy's CEO Saad Sherida Al-Kaabi said on Monday at a news conference, as quoted by Bloomberg.
Qatar's LNG output is in no way threatened by the disruption to shipping in the Red Sea, said Al-Kaabi, who is also Qatar's Minister of State for Energy Affairs. Most of Qatar's LNG cargoes are bound eastward to Asia, while European customers would see longer delivery times, the executive noted.
Last month, QatarEnergy halted LNG cargo shipments via the Red Sea.
At the end of last year and early this year, QatarEnergy signed several major LNG supply deals with European and Asian majors, including with Shell, TotalEnergies, Eni, and Sinopec.
QatarEnergy announced earlier this month the latest such agreement with India's Petronet, a 20-year LNG Sale and Purchase Agreement (SPA) for the supply of 7.5 million tons per annum (MTPA) of LNG to India.
In October 2023, the Qatari state energy giant signed another 27-year agreement to ship LNG to Europe by agreeing to deliver cargoes for Eni in Italy beginning in 2026, after similar deals with Shell and TotalEnergies for supply to the Netherlands and France, respectively.
Shell, TotalEnergies, and Eni, as well as U.S. firms ConocoPhillips and Exxon, all hold minority stakes in the joint ventures developing several LNG trains at the North Field East (NFE) and North Field South (NFS) expansion projects.
Last year, Al-Kaabi said that "40% of all the new LNG that will come to the market by 2029, when all our projects are up and running, is going to be from QatarEnergy."
By Tsvetana Paraskova for Oilprice.com
Tsvetana is a writer for Oilprice.com with over a decade of experience writing for news outlets such as iNVEZZ and SeeNews. More
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