Qatar Petroleum plans to export 20 to 26 refrigerated LPG cargoes of 44,000 tonnes each or 880,000 tonnes to 1.14 million tonnes in total from Ras Laffan on Qatar’s north coast in 2007, sources close to the company said.
“It’s about twenty-plus cargoes,” one source said, adding that exports were unlikely to reach 30 cargoes this year.
The level was up from 528,000 tonnes or 12 shipments in total the company exported from Ras Laffan in 2006. QP exported its first refrigerated LPG from Ras Laffan in May 2006.
Some 70 per cent of the 2007 volumes have been committed on term or semi-term basis, with all the contracts linked to Qatar Petroleum’s monthly contract prices.
The 20-26 cargoes include four to five LPG cargoes expected to be extracted from natural gas piped from the Dolphin Energy project.
The 230-mile long gas pipeline, with natural gas supplied from Qatar’s North Field into the UAE is scheduled to begin operation this summer.
Dolphin Energy is a joint venture between the Mubadala Development Co, on behalf of the government of Abu Dhabi, Occidental and French Total.
Dolphin Energy would have around 1.4 million tonnes of LPG for export in 2008, one of the sources said.
Qatar’s LPG output from Ras Laffan currently comes from gas fractionation plants at Al Khaleej Gas project and RasGas 2. Both are joint venture projects between QP and ExxonMobil.
Qatar’s LPG exports from Ras Laffan are expected to get a further boost as new LNG trains and gas processing plants come onstream by 2012.
Qatar holds the world’s third biggest gas reserves after Russia and Iran. The bulk of Qatar’s gas reserves, estimated at around 900 tcf, are in the North Field, which is the world’s biggest concentration of non-associated gas.
Qatar exports around 2.8 million tonnes of LPG from Ras Laffan and Messaied, the country’s main LPG export terminal before 2006 when rising LPG output from the North Field put Ras Laffan in the LPG spotlight.
QP’s LPG exports is expected to total 3.45 million tonnes in 2007, led by the projected increase in exports from Ras Laffan for the year.
