QP Awards North Field Drill Contracts

State monopoly Qatar Petroleum has awarded contracts for a total of eight offshore jack-up drilling rigs for the North Field Expansion Project, it said May 1. They are to start work from January 2020. Local player Gulf Drilling International (GDI) won six and US-based Northern Offshore Drilling Operations won the other two. The contracts are awarded for committed terms ranging from two to four years, with exercisable options to extend the drilling program durations if required.

The drilling program planned for the eight rigs is a major component of the North Field expansion project (NFE) to increase Qatar’s LNG production capacity from 77mn mt/yr to 110mn mt/yr. The scope includes the drilling and completion of 80 new wells from eight wellhead platform locations. 

QP CEO and energy minister Saad Sherida Al-Kaabi said the award package is the latest in a series of steps in Qatar Petroleum’s plan to execute the NFE, which is "progressing well and according to plan on all fronts.” It announced the award of the LNG tanker building contracts April 23.

QP talks with EC

A few days earlier, QP said, Saad Sherida Al-Kaabi met the European Commission's director-general for energy Dominique Ristori in Brussels. 

QP said the talks centered on co-operation between Qatar and the EC in the field of energy and particularly, in the LNG industry. "Both parties affirmed their joint commitment to strengthening the relationships between the two sides, discussed Qatari investments in the European energy sector in line with the EU and its member states' policy agenda, and Qatar's support to the EU energy policies," it said, without mentioning the EC's probe into QP's LNG contracts, now almost a year old.

The EC believes they are anti-competitive as some of the contracts include bans on re-delivery. Commissioner Margrethe Vestager, in charge of competition policy, said in June 2018 that energy should flow freely within Europe regardless of where it comes from" and market distortions may prevent consumers from enjoying the benefits of an integrated European energy market.