The Dolphin Gas project was conceived in 1999, when Qatar agreed a deal to supply North Field gas to the UAE. The project was significant because the UAE faced an impending gas shortage.  

In January 2002, Qatar Petroleum and Dolphin Energy, a joint venture of the UAE’s Mubadala Development Company, the US’ Occidental Petroleum and France’s Total, signed a 25-year development and production-sharing agreement covering upstream facilities at the North Field and the transportation of wet gas to a processing plant at Ras Laffan. There, commercial products such as condensate and liquefied petroleum gas are stripped out, and the refined dry gas is transported through a 364-kilometre subsea pipeline to a receiving facility in Taweelah, Abu Dhabi. From there, it is distributed to Dubai, Al-Ain and Fujairah in the UAE, as well as Oman.

The $1.6bn contract for the gas processing and compression plant in Ras Laffan was awarded to Japan’s JGC Corporation in 2004 and took three years to complete.

The export pipeline was awarded in 2004 to the US’ KBR, and completed in 2006. The 244km Taweelah-Fujairah gas pipeline was constructed between 2008 and 2010 by Russia’s Stroytransgaz.