DUBAI — Qatar’s plan to sign a record volume of long-term liquified natural gas (LNG) contracts announced by the country’s Energy Minister Saad al-Kaabi Tuesday is paving the way to the Gulf state’s goal to lead the global LNG market, and it's looking toward Asian countries to accomplish it.
Doha News reported that al-Kaabi and the CEO of state-owned QatarEnergy, said at the LNG 2023 conference in Vancouver, “Forty percent of all the new LNG that will come to the market by 2029, when all our projects are up and running, is going to be from QatarEnergy."
Qatar is already one of the world’s leading LNG exporters, if not the top, depending on the calculations. The Gulf state tied with the United States as the world’s top LNG exporter last year with 81.2 million tons according to ship-tracking data collected by Bloomberg. Financial market data provider Refinitiv reported that Australia took the lead in LNG exports for 2022 with 10.7 billion cubic feet per day, followed by the United States with 10.6 and Qatar close in third with 10.5.
Qatar took steps last year to maintain its lead and increase future output with the approval of expansion projects set to raise its LNG output by 64% to 126 million tons per year by 2027, reported Reuters.
