Industry Oil and gas Website www.qatargas.com Founded 1984 | Products Liquefied natural gas Headquarters Qatar Parent organization Qatar Petroleum | |
CEO Khalid Bin Khalifa Bin Jassim Al-Thani (1 Jun 2010–) Profiles | ||
Qatargas oil rig documentary
Qatargas is the world's largest liquefied natural gas (LNG) company. It annually produces and supplies the globe with 42 million metric tons of LNG from across its four ventures (Qatargas 1, Qatargas 2, Qatargas 3, and Qatargas 4). It is headquartered in Doha, Qatar, and maintains its upstream assets in Ras Laffan, Qatar. Natural gas is supplied to Qatargas's LNG trains from Qatar's massive North Field, by far the world's largest non-associated gas field. Together with RasGas, it reached a record LNG production of 77 million tones per annum in December 2010.
Contents
Qatargas corporate film
History
The Qatargas company was established in 1984. The company was originally formed to operate three LNG trains with a design capacity of two million tonnes per annum (mtpa) each (Qatargas 1). The first shipment of LNG was delivered to Japan in 1996. In July 2005, Qatargas Operating Company Limited was formed for the purpose of operating and maintaining the assets of Qatargas 1, Qatargas 2, Qatargas 3, Qatargas 4, Laffan Refinery and other assets on behalf of the shareholders. On 6 April 2009, the Qatargas 2 project was officially inaugurated. In November 2010 and January 2011, respectively, qatargas 3 and 4 started production.
Operations
The shareholders of the Qatargas 1 are Qatar Petroleum, ExxonMobil, Total, Mitsui and Marubeni. It owns three LNG trains. In 2008, it produced 10.09 million tonnes of liquefied natural gas. The projected production for the end of 2012 is 42 million tonnes per annum (mtpa).
Qatargas II, a joint venture of Qatar Petroleum and ExxonMobil, owns LNG trains 4 and 5 with a capacity of 7.8 million tonnes per annum (mtpa) each. It is supplying LNG for the South Hook LNG terminal at Milford Haven, Pembrokeshire, Wales, from where gas is fed to the South Wales Gas Pipeline. This covers 20% of the United Kingdom's needs of LNG.
Qatargas III is a joint venture between Qatar Petroleum, ConocoPhillips and Mitsui. Qatargas IV is a joint venture between Qatar Petroleum and Royal Dutch Shell. At first approached as separate projects, Qatargas III and IV are now being built by a joint asset development team that is staffed by Qatargas, ConocoPhillips and Shell employees as well as project direct hires and short term contractors. Its trains have started up by end 2010 (QG3) and early 2011 (QG4).
Qatargas' offshore operations are located approximately 80 kilometres (50 mi) northeast of Qatar's mainland on the North Field. The production facilities were commissioned in 1996. Processed gas is transferred to shore with the associated condensate via a single 32 inches (810 mm) subsea pipeline.
Qatargas transports its LNG by using two classes of LNG tankers known as Q-Max and Q-Flex.