“We’re discussing with China on more supplies,” the minister said in Geoje, South Korea. “We’re seeing big demand from China.”
PetroChina Co. and China National Offshore Oil Corp, owners of liquefied natural gas terminals on China’s eastern coast, in April last year signed agreements to import the fuel from Qatar to meet domestic demand. PetroChina will receive 3mn tonnes annually for 25 years from Qatargas 4 while China National Offshore will get 2mn tonnes a year from the project, the companies said then.
Qatar, the world’s largest exporter of LNG, is set to produce 77mn tonnes of the fuel a year by 2010, al-Attiyah said in March. China’s LNG demand may rise to 20mn tonnes a year by 2015, Zhang Weiping, deputy chief economist at China National Offshore, said earlier.
New projects in Australia won’t hurt Qatar’s LNG exports as the Middle East nation has already signed long-term contracts with customers, the minister said.
Australia is planning at least 10 LNG ventures, including Chevron Corp’s A$50bn (US$43bn) Gorgon project and Santos Ltd’s proposed A$7.7bn Gladstone plant, which will catapult the country to the world’s biggest supplier of the fuel after Qatar by 2016.
Al-Attiyah attended a vessel-naming ceremony in Geoje for a Q-Max LNG carrier to be delivered to Qatar Gas Transport Co.
LNG is natural gas that has been chilled to liquid form, reducing it to one-six-hundredth of its original volume, for transportation by ship to destinations not connected by pipeline. It’s turned back into gas for distribution to power plants and other buyers.
