TotalEnergies awarded contract for development of world’s largest gas field

Qatar’s Energy Minister Saad Sherida al-Kaabi announced on Sunday that TotalEnergies will hold a 6.25 percent stake in the project, which aims to increase Qatar’s natural gas production by 60 percent by 2027.

TotalEnergies is the first foreign company the emirate wants to work with on the North Field East project, with others to follow. Natural gas imports from Qatar have become significantly more important for European countries since the Russian attack on Ukraine and the subsequent Western sanctions.

The “North Field East” project aims to extract gas from the South Pars field, which extends in the Persian Gulf from the coast of Qatar to Iran. Alongside the USA and Australia, Qatar is already one of the main producing countries for liquid gas. According to estimates by the state-owned company Qatar Energy (QE), the emirate controls around ten percent of the world’s gas reserves.

The Qatari Minister al-Kaabi described the contract with TotalEnergies as “more of a marriage than a partnership”, the contract runs until 2054. According to industry information, the energy companies ExxonMobil, Shell and ConocoPhillips also want to acquire shares in the “North Field East” development project . Qatar had originally planned to handle the project alone.

Qatar signed an energy partnership with Germany in May. According to the Deputy Prime Minister of the Gulf State, Sheikh Mohammed bin Abdulrahman Al-Thani, the emirate wants to supply the Federal Republic with liquid gas as early as 2024.