Azerbaijan, Baku, Oct. 7. / Trend A.Badalova /
Qatar and Turkey have signed an energy cooperation agreement that could pave the way for liquefied natural gas shipments to Turkey, KLTV wrote.
Specific terms were not provided in reports carried by both countries' state-run news agencies.
The Qatar -Turkey deal calls for the establishment of energy working groups to further negotiations.
Qatar and its international partners are investing billions of dollars to boost the small gas-rich state's LNG export capacity to 77 million tons in the coming years.
Today Qatar is a leader in LNG production and exports, which accounted for 38.8 billion cubic meters of gas.
Qatar has the third largest gas reserves in the world, and is also a major exporter of liquefied natural gas. According to BP, the proven gas reserves in the country amounted to 25.46 trillion cubic meters, accounting for 13.8 percent of world reserves, as for early 2009. In 2008, gas production in Qatar, according to BP, amounted to 76.6 billion cubic meters, which is 20.9 percent higher than the volume in 2007.
Turkey is one of the participants of the Nabucco pipeline project, designed to transport gas from the Caspian region and the Middle East to the EU. Theoretically, the Qatari gas can be connected to the Nabucco through a gas pipeline between Qatar and Turkey, whose construction is now under discussion between the two countries. Nevertheless, this idea seems unlikely.
The construction of gas pipeline between Turkey and Qatar, for which negotiations began recently, will take a long time, Hungary's envoy for the Nabucco project Mihaly Bayer said.
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