Qatar Petroleum has signed a....
Qatar Petroleum has signed a memorandum of understanding (MoU) with Sasol Chevron for $6 billion worth of investments in the Gulf state's natural gas industry yesterday. Sasol Chevron is a 50-50 joint venture between South Africa's Sasoil and ChevronTexaco.
The investment will come under two different projects. Under the first project, QP and Sasoil Chevron signed a MoU for conducting a feasibility study of a $1.5 billion expansion of their ORYX gas-to-liquid (GTL) project. The expansion plans envision increasing the production capacity of the ORYX GTL plant to 100,000 barrels per day (bpd) by 2009. The first two trains will have combined capacity of 34,000 bpd when they enter production in December 2006.
The second project envisions $4.5 billio investment in the construction of another GTL complex with production capacity of 130,000 bpd of petroleum products. The project envisions an integrated scheme involving development of a natural gas field and the production of gas from Qatar's North Field which is the world's largest unassociated gas field.
The MoU signed yesterday states intentions to conduct feasibility studies on the construction of six GTL trains to enter operation in 2010. Sasoil Chevron will own 100% of the project but will have a production sharing agreement (PSA) with Qatar's state-run oil and gas company QP thus giving the state some of the project's output.
Yesterday's agreements are consistent with Qatar's ambition to become the world's largest producer of GTL fuels and liquefied natural gas (LNG) by the end of this decade. At present Qater is also negotiating GTL projects with ExxonMobil and Marathon Oil.
