MOSCOW (MRC) -- Qatar Petroleum (QP), the world’s top supplier of liquefied natural gas (LNG), has announced further increase in the capacity of Qatar’s LNG expansion project, by adding a fourth liquefaction train, to raise the country's liquefied natural gas capacity to 110 million t/y, as per GV.
The fourth liquefaction train, like the three trains announced earlier as part of a project to develop additional gas from the North Field, will be of nearly 8 million t/y capacity. When the project is completed, Qatar’s LNG production capacity will scale up by almost 43% from the current 77 million t/y, enabling the country to consolidate its position as the world's largest LNG producer and exporter, said Qatar Petroleum President & CEO Saad Sherida al-Kaabi.
He said the expected delivery of the first LNG from the new project would be either in end-2023 or early 2024. The production from the four trains will be "staggered in a sequence" to attain the first delivery in end 2023 or early 2024. With the addition of the fourth train, the new project will produce about 32 million t/y of LNG, 4,000 t/d of ethane, 260,000 b/d of condensate, and 11,000 t/d of LPG, in addition to approximately 20 t/d of pure helium.
Addressing a press conference at the Qatar Petroleum headquarters on Wednesday, al-Kaabi said: "As we have announced last year, Qatar Petroleum has embarked on a project to develop additional gas from the North Field and build three new LNG mega trains. Based on the good results obtained through recent additional appraisal and testing, we have decided to add a fourth LNG mega train and include it in the ongoing front-end engineering of the project.
"When the project is completed and all four new trains are online, Qatar’s LNG production capacity will reach 110 million t/y. This will increase Qatar’s total production capacity from 4.8 million to 6.2 million b/d of oil equivalent."
Al-Kaabi said the North Field Expansion Project is well underway with various activities currently ongoing, including the Front-End Engineering and Design (FEED) of the onshore facilities, which is being executed by Chiyoda Corporation of Japan. Al-Kaabi said when the FEED contract was awarded earlier, it was stated that engineering would be done for three trains with an option to add a 4th LNG train in future.
As MRC informed before, in September 2017, QP was talking to German energy firms Uniper and RWE about cooperating on a potential local LNG terminal.
We also remind that in July 2017, QP successfully completed the integration of Qatar Vinyl Company (QVC) into Qatar Petrochemical Company (Qapco), six months before the deadline of last year end.
MRC