Qatar’s petrochemicals industry is widely respected by its global customer base as a producer of quality polyolefins. Now Doha is looking at the next phase of its downstream development and at the heart of these plans are two massive petrochemicals schemes that are to be built at Ras Laffan in the north of the country.

“Doha seems to be in no rush to make a decision regarding gas production from the North Field”

The Al-Karaana complex will be the first of these megaprojects to start operations and the two joint-venture partners, Qatar Petroleum and the UK/Dutch Shell, have just released the tenders for the two main packages. The budget for the scheme is $6.4bn and to only release two contracts is unusual for a project of this size. However, this has not stopped contractors from forming consortiums to bid on the work.

Qatar offers a favourable working environment for contractors in that it is a stable country with a long track record of building massive hydrocarbons facilities. As well as this, there has been a lull in hydrocarbons project activity in neighbouring Saudi Arabia, meaning that winning a deal on Al-Karaana is likely to be a priority for many of the participating firms.

Al-Karaana will be followed by Al-Sejeel, a near identical scheme that will be constructed on an adjacent plot of land in Ras Laffan. This means almost $14bn-worth of contracts will be available over the next 12 months in Qatar.

The big question is what will come next. Doha seems to be in no rush to make a decision regarding further gas production from the North Field and there are no other large-scale process plants planned in downstream sectors such as refining or petrochemicals.

Al-Karaana and Al-Sejeel will be completed by 2018/19. By then, Qatar will have switched focus to the 2022 football World Cup. If the decision is made to hold off on further North Field production then, aside from some investment into maturing oil fields, Al-Karaana and Al-Sejeel might be the last two major hydrocarbons projects in Qatar for the next decade.