Belgian crude transporter Euronav and the US’ Overseas Shipbuilding Group are to provide two tankers, TI Asia and the TI Africa, through a joint venture. Each ship has a capacity of 3 million barrels of oil.

The contract, estimated to be worth $200m, is for eight years.

Earlier this month, Maersk agreed a drilling field development plan as part of ongoing work on the $5bn Al-Shaheen oil field, which aims to boost overall capacity to 525,000-barrels-a-day (b/d) by 2009 from 240,000 b/d at the moment (MEED 22:2:08).

Maersk, which is developing the field under a production sharing agreement with Qatar Petroleum, says it has struck a deal for the development of the offshore block 5 extension area which will allow drilling of up to six horizontal wells.

The overall lift in crude supplies from Al-Shaheen will see Qatar’s oil supply reaching 1.1m b/d by the end of 2009.