Qatar launches huge carbon dioxide storage facility

Qatari Energy Minister Saad Sharida al-Kaabi has announced the launch of a huge carbon dioxide storage facility.

In his keynote speech at the opening of the 40th Oil and Finance Conference in London, Al Kaabi said Qatar is investing hundreds of millions of dollars in the North Natural Gas Field expansion project to implement technologies that will reduce greenhouse gas emissions by 25% compared to similar facilities to reduce fuel consumption, capture and re-inject gas. Carbon dioxide extracted, according to the official QNA news agency (Qena).

"We recently started operating the Ras Laffan facility, the largest in the Middle East and North Africa, to recover and sequester CO2 with a capacity of 2.1 million tonnes of CO2 per year."

With these new underground carbon capture and storage projects, Qatar's LNG industry will be able to capture and remove more than 5 million tonnes of carbon dioxide annually by 2025.

Clean energy investments
The Minister also reviewed some of Qatar's strategic projects and investments that are part of its ongoing efforts to address climate change concerns and achieve environmental sustainability, including the establishment of Siraj Energy Company, which is working on a solar energy project with a capacity of about 700-800 MW by 2021.

Al Kaabi, who is also managing director and chief executive of Qatar Petroleum, said Qatar was working to produce more gas as a “cleaner fossil fuel”.

Talking about the role of liquefied natural gas in the transition towards cleaner energy sources, he said that Qatar sees natural gas as the main fuel in this energy transformation, it is versatile and flexible, economical and clean.

Al-Kaabi said that Qatar Petroleum is considering the use of carbon for the extraction of enhanced oil, a method started experimenting in oil fields.

Enhanced oil recovery improves oil production from the fields by pumping gas - in this case carbon - into the field to increase pressure, Reuters reported.

"This is a huge project, we are extending large pipelines across the country, maybe 10 years later we will boost oil extraction," Kaabi said.

Promote gas production
"The actual LNG units will be awarded to one company," Kaabi told a conference in London, adding that other businesses would be awarded to other companies, Reuters reported.

Kaabi said his country had invited international companies such as Exxon Mobil, Shell, Total and other "big players" to submit bids to help expand its share of the world's largest natural gas field, the German news agency reported.

Al Kaabi said in an interview with Bloomberg Television that Qatar would award final contracts related to the expansion of the "North Field" before the end of the year.

Qatar, the largest exporter of liquefied natural gas, is seeking to expand the North field in an effort to increase gas production to 110 million tons per year by 2024, compared to about 77 million now.

The expansion plans are boosting Qatar's LNG production capacity by 40%, a project strongly contested by large energy companies.

A few days ago, Qatar Petroleum announced that it had started operating and operating the East-North Dome and East-South Dome fields.

The development and production-sharing agreements concluded with Occidental Qatar Petroleum Limited for both fields expired on October 6, 2019.

Qatar Petroleum said the move was "an important affirmation of its high technical capacity to optimize the management and development of oil and gas fields."

North Field in Numbers
The North Field was discovered in 1971, and its recoverable gas reserves exceed 900 trillion standard cubic feet, making it the largest free gas field in the world.

- The field extends over an area of ​​6,000 square kilometers, which is equivalent to about half the area of ​​the State of Qatar.

- In 2008, the production capacity of the Qatar Petroleum Alpha project in the North Field was equivalent to 276 billion standard cubic feet of gas and 8.7 million barrels of fixed condensate.

- The commercial exploration of gas resources in the North Field began in late 1991 with the beginning of the first production operations within the first phase of the Alpha project.