Qatar's state-owned QP will increase production from the giant North Field by 10pc in a bid to boost gas exports.
The surprise move will add or 2bn ft³/d, or 400,000 b/d of oil equivalent (boe/d).
Work will commence in the next few months and effectively lifts the moratorium on new developments on the North Field, which has been in place since 2005.
The planned development brings into focus Qatar's LNG export facilities and the previously shelved plans to debottleneck liquefaction facilities at subsidiaries Rasgas and Qatargas. It is unclear if lifting the moratorium will see QP revisit those plans.
Qatar has 77mn t/y of LNG export capacity, which is fully utilized.
"Since 2005, Qatar Petroleum has been conducting extensive studies and exerting exceptional efforts to assess the North Field, including drilling a number of of appraisal wells to better estimate the Field's production potential, which enabled us to reach this satisfactory result today," said QP chief executive Saad al-Kaabi.
Like most of its other gas and LNG projects, Qatar is likely to seek to partner with an international oil company.
Qatar holds the world's third largest natural gas reserves after Russia and Iran, and is the largest supplier of LNG. Qatar's proven natural gas reserves stand at approximately 25 trillion m³, the majority of which is located in the massive offshore North Field. That field spans an area roughly equivalent to Qatar itself, and extends across its maritime border into what Iran calls South Pars.
"This new project will further strengthen Qatar's leading position as a major player in the global gas industry and underline the pivotal role of the country's oil and gas industry as the mainstay of the national economy," al-Kaabi said.
The Qatar development comes as Iran, enabled by the lifting of sanctions, seeks to ramp up output from South Pars. It aims to attract around $200bn of investment to its oil and gas sector to help boost output. Tehran's goal is to increase crude production capacity to nearly 4.7mn b/d by 2021, up from around 3.9mn b/d now, and take gas output to 777mn m³/d from 540mn m³/d currently.
The North Field project comes at a time when Qatar's position as the predominant global LNG supplies is under threat, with increasing competition from LNG exporters in the US and Australia. The surprise announcement follows several years of significant restructuring by QP, which recently saw the firm consolidate its LNG-producing subsidiaries Qatargas and Rasgas.
