Baku, Azerbaijan, Apr. 3
By Emil Ilgar – Trend:
Qatar has announced that it is lifting the moratorium on the North Field after 12 years, aiming to increase the gas and gas condensate output by 10 percent (400,000 barrels per day of oil equivalent).
Iran calls the field South Pars and plans to surpass Qatar’s output by May 2017, when its production capacity from the joint field reaches 540 million cubic per day (mcm/d).
Iran also produces about 560,000 b/d of gas condensate from this field.
Qatar has started the development of the joint field 10 years before Iran and has produced 2.5 trillion cubic meters of gas as of the end of 2016, while Iran’s cumulative output stood at 1 trillion cubic meters.
Giles Farrer, research director, global LNG, at Wood Mackenzie said that on the eve of Gastech, the world's biggest gas conference, Qatar has grabbed the headlines with a plan to lift its North Field moratorium and grab more long-term LNG market share.
“We expect much of the gas to be targeted for export although whether that is via regional gas exports, debottlenecking its existing trains or installing new LNG trains is not clear,” said a report on Wood Mackenzie’s official website.
“With global activity levels and costs low, now is a good time to add new capacity, even if the LNG market does presently look over supplied. By the time new capacity is commissioned, in 5-7 years time, new pre-FID LNG supply is likely to be required in the global market," said the report.
It’s a signal that Qatar intends to increase its market share, which has been falling as other regions have built new capacity.
“But it is also a threat to other developers of new capacity worldwide, as Qatar can add new capacity at a lower cost than anybody else. Any development of the North Field is likely to have a strong liquids component,” London-based company added.