Paris: The Chairman of the Administrative Control and Transparency Authority H E Abdullah bin Hamad Al Attiyah yesterday said Qatar is emerging as a new competitive global LNG supplier.
Al Attiyah said this at the opening session of the 14th International Oil Summit, which kicked off in Paris yesterday.
“Qatar, backed by strong technical and financial resources as well as possessing a world-class gas hub, has emerged as the new competitive global LNG supplier, declaring a new era for the country where its energy export portfolio starts to shift to natural gas and moves away from heavy dependence on oil,” Al Attiyah said.
He said Qatar has become the flagship in the international LNG industry. “We are now by far the largest supplier of LNG in the world with 77 million tonnes of annual capacity. Our LNG supplies are reaching all markets in the world. With a huge fleet of tankers, we can efficiently transport LNG supplies to these markets and can dynamically divert cargoes from one market to another as and when needed,” he said.
Qatar has also reached significant milestones in several gas-based industries, becoming a leader in terms of plant scale and production size. “For example, Qatar now has the world’s largest aluminium smelter. The Pearl gas-to-liquids facility is capable of producing four times as much GTL as the world’s current largest plant, Oryx GTL, which is also in Qatar,” Al Attiyah said.
The most important fundamental trend affecting the future of energy is the rising energy needs driven by expansion of global economic activity coupled with population growth.
“Demand for fossil fuels and other natural resources is likely to grow in absolute terms as more energy will be needed to satisfy growing demand for energy supplies. It is expected that world primary energy demand will increase by 35 percent during the next two decades,” Al Attiyah said.
Al Attiyah said climate change and its political implications is another fundamental trend that will shape the future of energy, noting that concern for the environment and efforts to combat the threat of CO2 emissions may affect the production and consumption of fossil fuels.
He said eight out of the 10 countries that own 80 percent of the world’s oil reserves are Opec members, which, he said, requires them to “place substantial amounts of capital investment throughout the oil industry value chain.
Qatar’s Ambassador to France Mohammad bin Jaham Al Kuwari attended the session along with other members of the Qatari delegation. QNA
