REUTERS

DUBAI QATAR Petroleum is considering investment in Australian liquefied natural gas (LNG) facilities and possibly buying into an export boom that poses the only serious challenge to its place as the world’s top LNG exporter, a company official said on Monday. “I think we are exploring all geographical places that would really achieve our business objectives and Australia definitely is an important proposition where maybe we will be able to find good investment opportunities,” Abdulrahman al Shaibi, director of finance at Qatar Petroleum, told Reuters on the sidelines of a conference in Dubai.

By 2020, Australia may eclipse Qatar as the world’s largest LNG exporting country.

Australia is now the fourth-largest LNG exporter and is already China’s biggest supplier, with liquefaction capacity forecast to increase five times from current levels to 100 million tonnes per annum (mta) by 2020. “Qatar Petroleum International (QPI) will be embarking on different types of projects.

They have in the pipeline greenfield projects very similar to the projects we have done over the last 20 years. So most probably those projects will be attracting project financing. But of course we will be looking into multi-source financing to ensure that we raise sufficient funding.” The company is also considering raising domestic gas prices for feedstock gas, Shaibi said. “I think prices for feedstock have been way below prices on the international market. We are considering raising the cost of the feedstock. But still it would remain within a range which could be seen as a subsidy,” he said. Shaibi said that petrochemicals would be “an important part of QP’s investment portfolio going forward.

We still have some large projects in the pipeline.” Qatar plans to spend $25 billion on expanding its domestic petrochemical industry over the next decade, more than doubling its annual petrochemical production capacity from 9.2 million tons now to 23 million tons by 2020.

In December Qatar signed a deal with Royal Dutch Shell to develop a $6.4 billion petrochemicals complex in the Ras Laffan industrial city in the state. Earlier this month QAPCO agreed to build a $5 billion petrochemical complex at Ras Laffan.