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DOHA, Dec 24: The United Arab Emirates and Qatar on Sunday signed an agreement kicking off a major regional gas project aimed at supplying the UAE with Qatari gas.
The Dolphin project’s development and production sharing deal was signed in Doha by Qatari Energy Minister Hamad al-Attiya, Dolphin Energy Ltd (DEL) chairman Ahmed Ali al-Sayegh, and TotalFinaElf vice-chairman Christophe de Margerie, whose company holds 24.5 per cent of the project.
The remaining stake is held by the UAE Offsets Group (UOG), which also reached a deal with Qatar on the construction of a gas pipeline to convey Qatari gas to the Emirates.
This agreement, I believe, could be rightfully called the deal of the century, not only for the state of Qatar, but also for the entire Middle East region, Attiya said at the signing ceremony.
The Dolphin project aims to create a regional grid taking gas from Qatar to Abu Dhabi, Dubai, Oman and eventually Pakistan and India.
In a project estimated at an overall cost of up to 10 billion dollars, the gas is to be transported by a 350-kilometre (220-mile) undersea pipeline from Qatar to the Abu Dhabi coast.
The gas will be distributed inside Abu Dhabi and neighbouring Dubai through existing networks and will be transported between the two through a pipeline for which technical bids have already been submitted.
The pipeline will then continue overland to Oman and from there to Pakistan through an undersea pipeline. The extension to Pakistan is expected to cost up to an additional three billion dollars.
Qatar sits on the world’s third largest proven gas reserves, after Russia and Iran, estimated at more than 500 trillion cubic feet (14 trillion cubic meters).
CARACAS: Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez said on Sunday that Opec members would “surely” agree at week’s end in Cairo to cut oil output by 1.5 million barrels a day.
Chavez said his Energy Minister Alvaro Silva Calderon would travel to the Egyptian capital on Monday for the special meeting, during which they will surely agree to the cut of one and a half million barrels a day (bpd).
Apart from that, non-Opec countries are already nearly ready to announce the cut (of 500,000 barrels a day) that will allow us to revive oil prices, the president said on his weekly radio programme.
He said the Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries (Opec) and non-Opec members now had a “combined” strategy on the issue.
Opec has demanded a 500,000 bpd cut from non-members before it goes ahead with its own reduction of 1.5 million bpd.
Non-Opec countries like Norway, Russia and Mexico have fallen short of the magic figure, but output cuts by Oman has taken them ever closer to 462,500 bpd.
Opec is to meet in Cairo next Friday to assess the situation.—AFP
