Qatar to focus on multiple fronts in energy industry, says minister Al Kaabi
Qatar’s Minister of State for Energy Affairs Saad bin Sherida Al Kaabi, who is also President and CEO of QatarEnergy, said the country was working hard on multiple areas within the energy industry.
Speaking during Doha Forum’s newsmaker interview with CNBC’s Dan Murphy, Al Kaabi said Qatar was currently producing 77 million tonnes of LNG per year.
“We already announced our plans to go to 142m tonnes per annum. If you look internationally, we’re adding 60 to 80m tonnes along with our partners. Attaining 160m tonnes of production would culminate in a 100% increase in LNG production,” he said.
Al Kaabi said the country’s second area of focus was petrochemicals.
“We’ll increase our petrochemical production by almost 130%. We’re building the MENA region’s largest polythene plant in Qatar. Similarly, we’re building the world’s largest petrochemical Polythene plant in Texas, USA, in association with Chevron Phillips. This will increase our production by about 130% from where we stand today,” he said.
Emphasizing on the third core element, Al Kaabi said Qatar ranked as the second-largest producer of fertilizers globally.
“We’re going to increase our production by double from 6m tonnes to 12m tonnes. We’ll be the largest fertilizer producer in the world. Around 50% of all food around the world is fortified or enhanced by fertilizer. So for us to reach 12m tonnes of production would be helping and feeding about 160m people around the world, which is food security,” he said.
The top minister said that a better environment, with clean air and water, was the vital fourth element Qatar was working on.
“Today, 10% of the power we enjoy comes from solar. Next year, we’ll inaugurate two plants — in Lusail and Ras Laffan. We’ll then go to about 15-16% by leveraging the capacity. We’ve already announced the building of a fourth plant,” he said.
Speaking on relations with the administration of President-elect Trump, he said US-Qatari friendship and energy relations transcend administrations.
“The most important thing is we’ve excellent partnerships between companies and people. This is sustainable because it’s good for business with mutual respect and mutual gain on both sides. It’s a win-win relationship. We’ve oil and gas projects that are multi-decade projects and can survive governments and administrations,” he said.
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