An image shows the Ras Laffan Industrial City, Qatar’s principal site for production of liquefied natural gas and gas-to-liquid, administrated by Qatar Petroleum, some 80 kilometers (50 miles) north of the capital Doha, on February 6, 2017.
Karim Jaafar | AFP | Getty Images
The world will need natural gas for a very long time and more investment is required to make sure supply security and reasonably priced prices in the course of the global energy transition, the energy ministers of Qatar and the United Arab Emirates said on Saturday.
Saad al-Kaabi, Qatari state minister for energy, told the Atlantic Council Global Energy Summit that a light winter in Europe had seen prices come down, but that volatility would remain “for a while to return” given there was not much gas coming into the market until 2025.
“The problem is what is going on to occur once they (Europe) need to replenish their storages this coming yr and the following yr,” he said.
Kaabi later told reporters that Qatar, which is working to expand its gas output, has limited volumes going to Europe that it might not divert away, “but there’s a limit to what we are able to do”.
Qatar is one in every of the world’s top producers of liquefied natural gas (LNG). The UAE is an OPEC oil producer that’s sharpening its give attention to the gas market as Europe seeks to interchange Russian energy imports after supply cuts since Western sanctions were imposed on Moscow over its invasion of Ukraine.
The Qatari minister said he believed that Russian gas would eventually return to Europe.
UAE Energy Minister Suhail al-Mazrouei, speaking on the identical panel in Abu Dhabi, agreed that “for a really very long time, gas will probably be there” and that while more renewable energy could be installed, more investment was needed in gas as a base load.
“The entire world needs to think about resources and the best way to enable firms to provide more gas to make it available and reasonably priced,” Mazrouei said.
Kaabi said it was unfair for some within the West as a part of its green energy push to say African countries shouldn’t be drilling for oil and gas when it was necessary for his or her economies and the world needed more supply.
Mazrouei said the “unclear” strategy of many countries made it difficult for them to commit to long-term gas contracts which in turn made it hard for energy firms to secure financing to speculate in developing production capability.
As competition for LNG heated up, Germany last yr struck a 15-year supply deal for Qatar LNG from 2026, the primary of its kind to Europe from Qatar’s North Field expansion project. QatarEnergy had signed a 27-year deal to provide China’s Sinopec.
Kaabi, who can also be CEO of QatarEnergy, said negotiations were happening with many players all over the world.
“There are a number of European and Asian buyers, and there’s a possible that by the top of the yr, the whole Qatar expansion will probably be sold out,” he said.
Qatar’s two-phase North Field expansion plan includes six LNG trains that may ramp up its liquefaction capability from 77 million tons every year to 126 million tons by 2027.
