President and chief executive officer of QP Saad al-Kaabi told the the Oil & Money 2018 conference in London today that there are LNG expansion plans both at home and overseas and these include building one of the world's largest ethane crackers.

“We are not done in Qatar,” Al-Kaabi. “We and Qatar are very ambitious.”

QP announced in September that it would add a fourth LNG train to its expansion programme to raise export capacity to 110 million tonnes a year from 77 million tonnes at present.

The expansion will now involve four new LNG trains. The original plan called for three LNG trains to raise capacity to 100 million tonnes a year. Al-Kaabi said the front-end engineering and design (FEED) project to be completed by Chiyoda next March included sufficient utilities to support four trains.

“We are talking with a lot of partners and the best solution is to have a joint venture with one or more,” he said. “We don’t need the financing and we are well on our way with engineering and we could do it ourselves, but the preferred strategy is to work through a joint venture. There is a scenario where we could go on our own, but that is not our preferred way. But everything is on the table and we are looking at many scenarios.”

QP has invited bids for contracts to build between 70 and 100 new rigs and equipment to produce gas from the North Field to supply the expansion. No final budget has been announced for the project.

Al-Kaabi said QP and its partners ExxonMobil and ConocoPhillips  are reviewing bids for the contract to build a 15m tonne-a-year LNG export terminal in the Gold Pass gas complex in Sabine Pass in Texas. The project will be completed, once the final approval is given, by the middle of next decade, Al-Kaabi said.

Al-Kaabi said that Qatar is now producing 4.8 million barrels of oil equivalent a day (boed)and this will rise to 6.2m boed once the four new trains are completed. He said QP’s plans call for production to rise to 6.5m boed.

Al-Kaabi said the embargo on Qatar led by Saudi Arabia and the UAE is not affecting QP, which supplies gas to the UAE.

Recent LNG supply deals include a 22-year contract to supply 3.4 million tonnes annually to Petrochina. The agreement, signed in September, is the largest the state-owned Chinese company has ever signed for gas supplies.

Al-Kaabi said that it plans to extract ethane from North Field natural gas for the first time and will use it in one of the world’s biggest ethane crackers.

“In the next to three months we will decide who is our partner and move ahead with a new petrochemical plant,” he said. “This could be the biggest ethane cracker in the world.”

Al-Kaabi said QP has a flexible strategy that is adjusted to address changing oil and gas scenarios.

“Even the plan we have is a conservative plan,” Al-Kaabi said. “I think you will see us change our strategy soon upwards.”