Rich Kruger, ExxonMobil Production Company's vice president for Asia Pacific/ Middle East, said Qatar is the "cornerstone" of the company's LNG business, which is being grown to meet future demand for natural gas.
"LNG and Qatar, particularly, will be a huge part of our business going forward," Kruger said. Already, Exxon and its partners provide a fifth of the world's LNG.
By the end of the decade, ExxonMobil and its Qatari partners expect to provide 60.8 million tonnes of the nation's annual production forecast of roughly 70 million tonnes, Kruger said. That would make Qatar the world's largest LNG exporter.
ExxonMobil is a partner in all of Qatar's existing LNG developments, holding between 10 and 30 per cent interests in each. About half of that will come from two new Qatar projects that are each designed to deliver 15.6 million tonnes a year, scheduled for completion in 2008 and 2009.
The first to be finished will ship LNG to the United Kingdom and Western Europe, and the second to the US. Kruger said that will "be the largest LNG import project planned for the US".
