Three new partners will join France’s TotalEnergies to take a stake in QatarEnergy’s North Field South (NFS) project which will boost Qatar’s LNG export capacity by 16 million tons per annum.
Qatar’s energy minister and chief executive of QatarEnergy, Saad Sherida Al-Kaabi, said on Thursday in London that QatarEnergy would announce the partners in “due course”, according to a statement by the company.
TotalEnergies secured last month a 9.375 percent participating interest in the NFS project – out of a total 25 percent interest available for international partners.
Prior to that TotalEnergies took a 6.25 percent stake in the $28.75 billion North Field East (NFE) expansion project, the first and larger phase of QatarEnergy’s giant LNG expansion.
Besides TotalEnergies, QatarEnergy previously selected Italy’s Eni, US firms ConocoPhillips and ExxonMobil, and UK-based Shell to join the NFE project.
Together, NFE and NFS form the wider North Field Expansion project to increase LNG production from the North Field, adding about 48 mtpa to Qatar’s export capacity and bringing it to 126 mtpa by 2028.
Al-Kaabi did not reveal the names of the other partners that would join the NFS but QatarEnergy is expected to announce three firms out of these previously picked partners for the NFE project.
Reuters also reported on Wednesday, citing unnamed sources, that Shell and ExxonMobil would join the NFS project.
The two firms are expected to be named as NFS partners in the coming weeks, the agency said.