Australia currently exports around 7.5 million tonnes per annum with the potential for 20 million tones if all proposed projects get off the ground.

The announcement was made by the Qatari energy minister Abdullah bin Hamad Al Attiyah at the opening of the LNG14 conference, with expansion projects expected to require investments of $30 billion in everything from field development, plant construction, shipping tankers and receiving terminals.

Already the Qatari Emir, Emir Sheikh Hamad bin Khalifa al-Thani, has inaugurated the train three project which has seen $US2.3 billion dollars of investment in Qatar and India, and developed the world's largest LNG processing facility, which has already sent the first supplies of liquefied natural gas to the subcontinent.

Train three will have a production capacity of 4.7 million tonnes of LNG per year and has been built to supply the first phase LNG quantities of five million tonnes per annum contracted with India's Petronet.

Qatar pumped $US1.3 billion dollars into the project while India spent $US600 million dollars to build a receiving terminal at Dahej in Gujarat, and $US200 million dollars on pipelines to transport the gas.

The country's giant North Field has recoverable reserves of over 900 trillion cubic feet of gas, making it the third largest in the world.