Recent projects awarded in Qatar have focused primarily on the country's downstream sector.

Foreign firms have benefited as Qatar aims to attract around $16 billion in foreign capital into its energy and petrochemical sector as part of a drive to wean the economy off crude oil dependency.

However, oilfield development remains a priority as efforts continue to harness production at existing fields.

One of the foreign investors in the Qatari industry to benefit from this is Shengli Drilling International China, attached to China's second largest oilfield of Shengli.

The company recently secured a second service contract, valid for a period of three years, for the Dukhan Oilfield, the largest and only onshore oilfield in Qatar, which has been described by some as one of the world's most challenging oilfields as far as drilling is concerned.

Shengli Drilling International is to ink the deal with Essar Oil Ltd, an Indian drilling company contracted by Qatar General Petroleum to drill wells in Dukhan.

The contract's value is yet to be finalised by the two sides.

Shengli is scheduled to start operation in Dukhan in July this year.

Shengli's contract with Essar is the second one that Shengli has secured in the Qatari oilfield.

Downstream, Qatar Fertiliser Co (Qafco) is gearing up to refurbish 23 and 30 year-old fertiliser plants.

As part of the effort, the firm recently awarded the planned upgrade contract to Germany-based UHDE GMBH.

Under the terms of the modernisation project that has been pegged at $22,000.000, UHDE will be responsible for retrofitting a new high-voltage power supply station.

As a result, the reliability and safety of the facilities are expected to be significantly improved.

Meanwhile, the startup of the 1.3 million tonnes per year (tpy) joint venture cracker project of Qatofin and Q-Chem II has been put back from mid-2007 to end-2007/early-2008.

Ethylene from the cracker project will feed Qatofin's 450,000 tpy LLDPE unit, Q-Chem's 350,000 tpy HDPE and 350,000 tpy alpha olefins units, with surplus being exported or fed to Qatar Vinyl Co's units in Mesaieed.

Qatar Chemical Co Ltd, a joint venture firm established by Qatar Petroleum and Chevron Phillips Chemical Co LLC, has opened an integrated petrochemical complex also based in Mesaieed.

The global-scale complex houses a 47,000 tpy 1-hexene plant, a 453,000 tpy polyethylene facility and a 500,000 tpy ethylene cracker.

Technip-Coflexip has signed a engineering, procurement and construction (EPC) contract with Qatar Petroleum, Sasol and Oryx GTL Ltd in a deal that is reportedly worth $675 million.

It will involve the design and construction of what is claimed to be the world's largest natural gas-to-liquids (GTL) complex and the first GTL project in the Middle East.

Located in Ras Laffan Industrial City, the complex will use 330 million cufd of lean gas from the North Field as feedstock.

It will produce 34,000 bpd of liquids, 24,000 bpd of diesel, 9,000 bpd of naphtha and 1,000 bpd of liquefied petroleum gas.

The process is based on the slurry phase distillate process developed by Sasol.

Technip-Coflexip's work scope includes detail engineering, procurement and construction.

Earlier this year, the world's largest NGL plant, Natural Gas Liquids (NGL-4) in Masa'id Industrial City was opened.

The Qatar Petroleum $550 million project will produce ethane-rich gas to meet growing demand of ethane as petrochemical feedstock.

It will receive raw NGL products from North Field Gas Plant and Arab D Plant in Dukhan and provide processed ethane to Q-Chem and Qatar Petrochemical Company (Qapco).

McDermott has also won a contract to supply a wellhead platform for the Al Khaleej Project in Qatar's North Field.

J Ray McDermott, a subsidiary of McDermott International Inc and ExxonMobil Middle East Gas Marketing Ltd, signed a contract for the supply of a wellhead platform and pipeline for the Al Khaleej Gas Project in Qatar's North Field.

Estimated to be worth $150 million, it will involve the installation of a 2,100 tonne wellhead deck and a 98km 38 inch pipeline from the platform to the onshore terminal.

Meanwhile, Canada-based Ivanhoe Energy has decided to sell a five per cent stake to GTL Japan in its planned natural gas liquids and gas-to-liquids complex in Qatar.

Construction plans under consideration call for building a manufacturing base that will include an upstream NGL plant with installed production capacities of 78,000 barrels per day (bpd) of condensates; 24,000 bpd of propane and 16,000 bpd of butane.

The GTL facility, on the other hand, will have a capacity of 185,000 bpd of naphtha and diesel.

The total investment in the development is expected to amount to about $5 billion.