Qatar’s state-owned oil and gas company QatarEnergy has selected U.S. oil major ConocoPhillips as a partner in the large LNG project of the North Field East (NFE) expansion.
This is the third in a series of announcements on partnerships in the $28.75 billion expansion project. QatarEnergy firstly announced a partnership with France’s TotalEnergies, then with Italy’s Eni, and now with ConocoPhillips.
Saad Sherida Al-Kaabi , CEO of QatarEnergy, and Ryan Lance , CEO of ConocoPhillips, signed the partnership agreement during a ceremony held in Doha.
Pursuant to the agreement, QatarEnergy and ConocoPhillips will become partners in a new joint venture company (JV), in which QatarEnergy will hold a 75 per cent interest while ConocoPhillips will hold the remaining 25 per cent interest.
The JV in turn will own 12.5 per cent of the entire NFE project, which has a total LNG capacity of 32 million tons per annum.
Al-Kaabi said: “Today, we sign a new partnership agreement that will further enhance our relationship and enable us to benefit from the wide experience of ConocoPhillips in the development of the world’s largest LNG expansion project. Our work together will enable us to meet our target of increasing the State of Qatar’s LNG production capacity from 77 to 110 million tons per annum through the North Field East project, which will start production in 2026.”
“Our collaboration will help produce cleaner energy to meet growing global demand and achieve a realistic energy transition towards achieving our climate change objectives thanks to the project’s (…) environmental attributes, including carbon capture and sequestration and other technologies deployed in this project.”
Lance said: “ConocoPhillips is delighted to build on our long history of partnering with QatarEnergy and participate in this next phase of development of Qatar’s North Field. We recognize that LNG plays an increasingly important role in energy security and the global energy transition.”
QatarEnergy says that the NFE project employs the highest environmental standards, including carbon capture and sequestration, to reduce the project’s overall carbon footprint to the lowest levels possible.
In addition, more partners are slated to join the NFE, and the relevant announcements will be made soon.