Tag Archive for: qatar

Qatar Petroleum to push ahead with expansion despite Gulf crisis

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From: REUTERS NEWS AGENCY / 8 Mayo

 

State energy giant continue with expansion strategy to be on par with oil majors, despite Gulf crisis embargo.

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

 

From: REUTERS NEWS AGENCY / 8 Mayo

 

Oil Producers Likely to Meet in April on Output Freeze

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Major oil producers are likely to meet in April to discuss a proposal to freeze output at January levels to stabilize the market, according to four Gulf OPEC delegates.

Ministers from some members of the Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries had suggested that such a meeting would take place this month in Russia. The talks are now most likely to occur in Qatar’s capital Doha, said three of the delegates, who asked not to be identified because the matter isn’t public.

The probability that Doha will play to host the meeting is high as Qatar is president of the OPEC ministerial conference this year, even as Russia is the country that called for the meeting, two of the delegates said. The meeting may still not take place if there aren’t many important producers attending and agreeing beforehand to freeze production, three delegates said.

Saudi Arabia, Russia, Venezuela and Qatar in February proposed an accord to cap oil output and reduce a worldwide surplus. Crude prices extended gains after their initial meeting on Feb. 16 and have climbed more than 40 percent since slumping to a 12-year low in January. Prices may have passed their lowest point as shrinking supplies outside OPEC and disruptions inside the group erode global oversupply, the International Energy Agency said on March 11.

Russia-Iran Talks

Iran plans to boost crude output to 4 million barrels a day, the highest level since 2008, before it will consider joining other suppliers in seeking ways to re-balance the global oil market. Russian Energy Minister Alexander Novak met Monday with Iranian Oil Minister Bijan Zanganeh in Tehran.

Saudi Oil Minister Ali al-Naimi said last month in Houston that the process of devising a freeze agreement would continue with more discussions in March. Nigerian Petroleum Minister Emmanuel Kachikwu said two weeks later that talks would convene in Russia on March 20. Russia’s Novak told state television channel Rossiya 24 on March 4 that a meeting could take place between March 20 and April 1 in Russia, Doha or Vienna, where OPEC has its headquarters.

So far no countries have received invitations or an agenda for a meeting, the four OPEC delegates said.

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