Qatar aims to increase non-Qatari LNG trading volumes three- to fourfold by 2030 

Qatar’s Energy Minister, president and chief executive of national oil company QatarEnergy, Saad Al-Kaabi has laid out expansion plans for the country’s vast LNG reserves. 

Speaking at Bloomberg’s Qatar Economic Forum in Doha, Qatar, the energy minister said the country and the company have plans for a rapid expansion of trading in non-Qatari LNG volumes.

"Currently we are trading around 10M tonnes [per annum] of LNG, physical trading... The mandate is that more than 50% needs to be non-Qatari volumes, which is the case today. The ambition is, by 2030, to reach somewhere in the range of 30-40M tonnes [per annum] of non-Qatari LNG traded by our LNG trading group," he said.

Asked if Qatar will also reserve a portion of the volumes set to come from Qatar’s North Field East offshore LNG expansion project for spot trading, and how much, the energy minister was less specific.

"We are going to be producing 160M tonnes [per annum] of LNG as projects, if you include the US. We’re at 77M tonnes [per annum] today. We have 70 ships today; we’re adding 128 [LNG carriers]. All that will be under the control of our trading organisation, where they control the spot market. [We will] trade some of that volume. Not all of that volume will be locked up in long-term deals, so we will have plenty to deal with.

In statements published by QatarEnergy on the outcome of the recent visit to Qatar by US President Donald Trump to Qatar, Mr Al-Kaabi pointed to Qatari-US energy partnerships including the Golden Pass LNG export project as an example of the good relationship between the two countries. 

President Trump and Qatar made global headlines when Qatar offered and President Trump accepted the gift of a Boeing 747 airplane that may be used to replace the US president’s Air Force One official airplane.