For Qatar, concluding supply agreements in Europe in preparation for the loss of at least some Russian oil (and gas) supplies in the future is a sound strategy to ensure that the political will and financial support for the Northern Field Expansion project continues. to be completed in 2027. For about five years before these new agreements were signed with TotalEnergies and Eni, state-owned QatarEnergy expected to complete various partnership agreements, although it has stated that it could finance the entire project itself if needed. . Other international oil companies bidding on the four North Field East Expansion trains and / or the other two trains in the second phase of the North Field South Expansion project include ExxonMobil, Shell and ConocoPhillips, according to Qatar sees a uniform separation of buyers for LNG volumes from expansion projects, according to al-Kaabi, with Asian buyers expected to make up half of the market and buyers in Europe the rest. In this context, QatarEnergy has awarded the contract for the supply of engineering and construction for the North Field expansion project to a joint venture between the Spanish Tecnicas Reunidas and the Chinese group Wison. In the short term, the plan is that new LNG supplies from Qatar will come to Germany through existing import routes that will be reinforced with new infrastructure approved by the German Bundestag on 19 May. This includes the development of four floating LNG input facilities on its north coast and two permanent onshore terminals, which are currently under development, according to the EU energy source. earlier than planned, Qatar also plans to supply Germany with significant LNG supplies from the Golden Pass terminal on the Texas Gulf Coast. QatarEnergy owns 70% of the shares of the Golden Pass terminal project, with ExxonMobil holding the rest. The estimated capacity of the Golden Pass terminal will be approximately 18 million metric tons per year (mtpy) of LNG and the facility is expected to be operational by 2024. That said, there are still doubts about the extent to which Qatar’s LNG can replace the oil and gas that has historically flowed into the EU from Russia. According to OilPrice.com, last year Germany imported 142 billion cubic meters (bcm) of gas in 2021, down 6.4 percent from 2020, averaging about 12 bcm per month (although actual use by month by month does not reflect this arithmetic average due to different seasonal use). As a guide, according to data from the Independent Commodity Intelligence Services (ICIS), for the month of December 2021, pipeline gas from Russia accounted for 32% of Germany’s total imports that month, followed by supplies from Norway (20 percent of the total) and the Netherlands (12 percent of the total). The use of this December rate gives a figure for the whole year with just over 45 billion cubic meters of gas imported from Germany to Russia, equivalent to just under 33 million metric tonnes of LNG or just over 40 million tonnes oil equivalent. The 33 million metric tonnes of LNG per year for Germany alone from Russia is comparable to the total Golden Pass during the year of 18 million metric tonnes of LNG per year. By Simon Watkins for Oilprice.com More top readings from Oilprice.com:
