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The Emir of Qatar has laid the foundation stone for the world’s largest LNG project, the North Field expansion project, which will boost Qatar’s export capacity by 48 million tons per annum (mmtpa) by 2027, state giant QatarEnergy said on Tuesday.
The Emir of Qatar, Sheikh Tamim bin Hamad Al Thani was joined by QatarEnergy’s President and CEO, Saad Sherida Al-Kaabi, who is also the Minister of State for Energy Affairs, in the ceremony at the Ras Laffan Industrial City.
Qatar announced in 2021 the world’s largest LNG project, which is set to raise its LNG production capacity from 77 million tons per annum (mmtpa) to 110 mmtpa. The Gulf gas and oil producer also plans another expansion phase at the North Field, the world’s largest natural gas field, which it shares with Iran. The second expansion phase will be the North Field South Project (NFS), set to further increase Qatar’s LNG production capacity from 110 mmtpa to 126 mmtpa, with an expected production start date in 2027.
The two phases of the project include six mega trains, each with a production capacity of eight mmtpa of LNG. Four of the trains are part of the North Field East expansion project, and two are part of the North Field South expansion project, contributing a total of 48 mmtpa to global LNG supply, QatarEnergy said.
QatarEnergy has picked international majors TotalEnergies, Shell, ConocoPhillips, ExxonMobil, Eni, Sinopec, and CNPC as minority shareholders in project.
In July this year, Al-Kaabi said that “40% of all the new LNG that will come to the market by 2029, when all our projects are up and running, is going to be from QatarEnergy.”
The United States and Qatar are frontrunners – by a mile – as the LNG exporters best positioned to capture the global demand for additional supply capacity over the next two decades, Wood Mackenzie said in a report earlier this year.