Qatar Awards Chiyoda Key LNG Job
Qatar Petroleum announced March 19 that it has awarded Japan's Chiyoda Corporation a key contract in its LNG expansion programme.
QP said it has selected Chiyoda to execute the Front End Engineering and Design (Feed) of onshore facilities of its North Field expansion. The new facilities will produce an extra 23mn metric tons/yr of LNG, raising Qatar's nominal production capacity from 77mn to 100mn mt/yr.
"The award of the Feed to Chiyoda Corporation is a significant milestone in our journey to deliver the first LNG from this new project by the end of 2023," said QP CEO Saad Sherida al-Kaabi. QP announced its plan to expand to 100mn mt/yr in April 2017.
"We are continuing discussions with potential international joint venture partners for this strategic project to determine an optimised arrangement with the objective of delivering maximum value to the State of Qatar and contribute to optimal utilisation of Qatar's natural resources," he added. ExxonMobil, Shell, Total, Eni and others have already held talks with QP and each individually signalled their keenness to work on the expansion, which all agree would represent a lower-cost LNG development opportunity than most have in their existing project pipelines.
QP said the Feed scope of work will provide the basic design for the addition of three 7.8mn mt/yr mega-trains, with associated pre-investment to add a fourth LNG train in the future.
The onshore facilities would receive roughly 4.6bn ft3/d (47.6bn m3/yr) of feed gas from the southern sector of the North Field - which straddles the offshore Qatari border with Iran -- and which is the largest single non-associated gas field in the world.
Processing of the feed gas will also produce about 3,000 mt per day of ethane as a feedstock to Qatar's petrochemical development, 185,000 b/d of condensate and 8,500 mt/d of liquid petroleum gas (LPG) for sale into world markets in addition to 12 mt/d of pure helium, said QP.
Chiyoda has a long successful relationship with QP, and also other producers, being a lead contractor on the ongoing Novatek-led three-train Yamal LNG development in Russia, train one of which began exports in December 2017.
Qatar, currently the world's largest LNG producer, fears becoming marginalised as both the US and Australia are expected to top its roughly 79mn mt/yr LNG output by around 2020 - hence its 2017 decision to lift a moratorium on increasing production.
Separately, UK contractor Petrofac said March 19 it had signed a binding letter of intent for a contract worth $580mn with a Gulf Cooperation Council national oil company for engineering, procurement and construction of a major project that it declined to disclose.