Qatar Petroleum to push ahead with expansion despite Gulf crisis

State energy giant Qatar Petroleum (QP) will push ahead with its production expansion and foreign asset acquisition strategy to be on par with oil majors, despite a regional political and economic embargo on Doha, its chief executive said.

Qatar is one of the Organization of the Petroleum Exporting Countries’ smallest producers but is also one of the most influential players in the global liquefied natural gas (LNG) market due to its annual production of 77 million tonnes.

“We are in Mexico, we are in Brazil, we are contemplating investing in the US in many areas, in shale gas, in conventional oil. We are looking at many things,” al-Kaabi said in an interview at QP’s headquarters in Doha.

“We are looking very critically at the United States because we have a position there. We have the Golden Pass that we are investing in,” he said.

Qatar Petroleum is the majority owner of the Golden Pass LNG terminal in Texas, with ExxonMobil Corp and ConocoPhillips holding smaller stakes.

Al-Kaabi said “depending on the project’s cost and feasibility” he expects to take a final investment decision on expanding the Golden Pass LNG by the end of the year.

“I’m not in the business of infrastructure. I’m not going to have a liquefaction plant only. It has to be something that will be linked with an upstream business that we would buy in the US so we need to be naturally hedged,” he added.

To maintain its dominance in the US and Australia, QP is cutting costs at home and seeking to expand overseas through joint ventures with international companies.

“We will always go with one of our international partners that we have business with here in Qatar,” al-Kaabi said. “Some of our partners want to divest, some of our partners want to acquire something together.”

QP is focusing on other opportunities in Mexico, Latin America, Africa and in the Mediterranean, he said. QP is also looking to enter Mozambique, where Exxon and Eni operate, he added.

Al-Kaabi said the share of overseas upstream production will be “a good portion” in the long term, but it will not compare with its share at home.

“Our strategy says we are going to expand in upstream business with a little bit of downstream that will be connected to some other businesses that we are doing and a few one-off deals in petrochemicals,” he said.

 

We are in Mexico, we are in Brazil, we are contemplating investing in the US in many areas

                                                                        SAAD AL-KAABI