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Tuesday, 07 October, 2008, 07:20 GMT | more prices >>

Dolphin gas reaches UAE



By Upstream staff 

Dolphin Energy has imported the first gas processed at its own plant in Qatar to the United Arab Emirates, adding it expects flows to reach 2 billion cubic feet per day early next year.

The Dolphin project linking Qatar's giant North field with the UAE and Oman is the first cross-border gas project in the Gulf Arab region.

"The next challenge is to carefully ramp up our production, until we reach targeted pipeline throughput of 2 Bcfd in early 2008," UAE Deputy Prime Minister and Dolphin chairman Sheikh Hamdan bin Zayed al-Nahayan said in a statement.

Mubadala Development Company, run by the government of the UAE's Abu Dhabi, owns 51% of Dolphin while France's Total and US player Occidental each have a 24.5% stake.

The 364 kilometre gas export pipeline to the UAE was completed last year. Dolphin began using it in March to bring 400 million cubic feet per day of gas processed by state-owned Qatar Petroleum to the emirate of Dubai.

Dubai will be taking between 600 MMcfd and 800 MMcfd once full exports begin, industry sources told Reuters.

The $3.5 billion Dolphin project was dragged into a territorial dispute between Saudi Arabia and the UAE last July, when the Saudis told Total and Occidental that it had reservations over the subsea pipeline route.

The project's development was unaffected. First imports through the pipeline were about a month late, a small delay for such a large project. Dolphin had previously scheduled the full commercial launch in the first week of June.

Dolphin is in talks with Qatar to increase the flow of gas to the pipeline's maximum capacity of 3.5 Bcfd. But Qatar has called a moratorium on new projects from the North field, as it studies the effect of rapid development on the largest reservoir of pure gas in the world.

The Dolphin project's link between Oman and the UAE saw its first flow of gas in 2004. The direction of the UAE-Oman pipeline will be reversed next year, when Oman will begin receiving gas from Qatar via the UAE.

The Dolphin gas plant in Ras Laffan, Qatar, has four gas processing trains with capacity of 500 MMcfd each.


Tuesday, 10 July, 2007, 12:54 GMT  | last updated: Tuesday, 10 July, 2007, 12:54 GMT

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