With three award ceremonies this week, QatarEnergy has now awarded 75% of the available equity stakes in its $28.75bn, 32mn t/y North Field East (NFE) LNG expansion project. ExxonMobil, Eni and ConocoPhillips have joined TotalEnergies (MEES, 17 June) as the winners so far. With 25% of equity still to be awarded, the question is whether QatarEnergy will opt to bring in another major LNG marketer such as Shell or Chevron, or if it will look to core markets in the likes of China and South Korea.
So far, QatarEnergy has been content to broadly bring existing partners onboard. ExxonMobil, TotalEnergies and ConocoPhillips all have stakes in Qatar’s existing 77mn t/y LNG facilities, with Eni the only new player. Eni has been massively increasing its Middle East portfolio over the past five years and this marks its entry into Qatar’s upstream. “As a newcomer joining this world leading LNG project, we feel the privilege and the responsibility of being a strategic partner of choice for the State of Qatar,” Eni CEO Claudio Descalzi said on 19 June. (CONTINUED - 800 WORDS)
