DOHA (Reuters) – TotalEnergies will invest $1.5 billion in Qatar’s “North Field South” gas project, in which it will hold a 9.375% stake alongside QatarEnergy and other international partners, it said on Saturday. the CEO of the French group, Patrick Pouyanné.
Doha announced in June that it had awarded a 25% stake to the French oil group in a joint venture formed with its national company to develop the “North Field East” (NFE) project, in order to increase the export capacity of liquefied natural gas. (LNG) of Qatar.
Regarding the “North Field South Expansion” (NFS) project, the managing director of QatarEnergy, Saad al Kaabi said on Saturday that TotalEnergies would hold 9.375% of the 25% allocated by Doha to international partners, QatarEnergy also retaining a majority share of 75 %.
Saad al Kaabi added that the names of the other partners would be revealed later.
The NFS project has a production capacity of 16 million tonnes (Mt/year), two times less than the NFE project, TotalEnergies said in a press release.
“Thanks to the combination of its interests in NFE (6.25%) and NFS, TotalEnergies will add, by 2028, 3.5 Mt/y of production to its growing global LNG portfolio, in line with the Company’s objective of increasing the share of natural gas in its sales mix to 50% by 2030”, says the hydrocarbon giant.
Patrick Pouyanné welcomed during a press conference in Doha an agreement which comes at the “best time”, given the explosion in demand for LNG in Europe after the virtual interruption of deliveries of Russian natural gas in the context of the war in Ukraine.
He indicated that TotalEnergies was going to invest 1.5 billion dollars (1.55 billion euros) in this project and said he was satisfied to be able to continue to invest in Qatar after the closure of the Russian market, while assuring that there is no “overexposure” of the French group to the small Gulf emirate, the world’s fourth largest gas producer and the world’s largest exporter of LNG.
“If Qatar had offered us to invest more, we would have invested more,” he said.
Patrick Pouyanné also pleaded for the conclusion of business-to-business agreements to secure Europe’s gas supplies, without going through diplomatic or political channels. Security of supply “has a price”, added the CEO of TotalEnergies.
(Report by Andrew Mills and Maha El Dahan, with Yasmin Hussein, French version Tangi Salaün)
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