State-owned oil and gas company Qatar Energy signed a $1.5 bn deal with France’s Total Energies for the Northfield South Expansion.
The French energy firm will have a 9.3 percent stake in the North Field South gas project, the first foreign partner in that section of the vast field, Qatar Energy Minister Saad Sherida Al-Kaabi announced, at a news conference alongside TotalEnergies chief executive Patrick Pouyanne.
This comes as Europe scrambles to find new energy sources to replace Russian supplies.
The Northfield expansion project is made up of two distinct parts, namely the Northfield East or NFE project, which will increase the state of Qatar’s LNG production capacity from 77 to 110 million tons per annum, and the Northfield South or NFS project, which will further increase Qatar’s liquefied natural gas or LNG production capacity from 110 to 126 million tonnes per annum.
Al Kaabi said Total Energies will have an effective net participation interest of 9.375 percent in the NFS project, out of a total of 25 percent available for international partner participation, while Qatar Energy will retain 75 percent interest. Other partners in this project will be announced in due course.
In June and July of this year, Qatar Energy and Total Energies made five separate partnership announcements for the NFE project that will cost around $29 billion to construct.
