QP Increasing oil production important for Qatar , says Al-Attiyah
Posted: 15 December 2004
Qatari Minister of Energy & Industry H.E Abdullah Bin Hamad Al-Attiyah told Pipeline Magazine that Qatar’s current oil production was almost 850,000 barrels per day and that projects were on in the country’s hydrocarbon sector to not only exploit its huge gas resources but to also increase oil reserves, which have risen from 2 billion barrels to 4.5 billion barrels.
He said that a special committee is studying the possibility of a new OPEC price band and that there was no question of his commenting on what he thought would be a fair price for the cartel. He maintained it was for the committee to decide and report to the Conference.
Regarding oil prices, Al-Attiyah said that the Conference would take a decision on slashing production subject to a further fall in prices. This issue will be looked at during OPEC’s next meeting in Vienna on January 30. Early in December, last year OPEC slashed production by a million barrels a day to stem a slide in prices.
Al-Attiyah said that his country’s attempts to increase GTL and LNG production have met with success with one Gas- to- Liquids project already under construction and several others are at different stages of negotiation or engineering development.
When completed in early 2006, the Oryx GTL project, which is a joint venture between QP and Sasol, will be the most technically advanced GTL plant in the world, using around 330 million cubic feet per day of lean gas from Al Khaleej Gas project to produce 34,000 barrels per day of liquids.
Regarding the cost of construction of GTL projects, Attiyah maintained that economies of scale operate to make production from these plants viable and banks and financial institutions are forthcoming with support.
By 2012, Qatar ’s LNG export is expected to exceed 70 million tonnes per annum and Qatar will be the largest LNG exporter of the world with a significant role in LNG shipping and receiving terminals.
Al-Attiyah was speaking to the Press at the inauguration of Qatar Petrochemical Company’s self-operated office at Al-Mousa Tower II in Dubai , UAE.
Opening this office in Dubai comes within the framework of expanding the company’s scope of work and its commercial relations and opening new markets for its products of polyethylene.
Qapco is presently undergoing debottlenecking of its ethylene cracker to increase its ethylene production capacity to 720,000mt by 2006 and simultaneously increase LDPE production to 420,000mt.
Posted by Editor Pipeline Magazine
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