Qatar Petroleum (QP) is in ongoing talks with supermajors and others about its planned North Field Expansion (NFE) liquefied natural gas project, and plans to unveil the winner of the main engineering, procurement and construction contract before the end of the year.

QP chief executive Saad Sherida al-Kaabi said this week that the state giant is in discussions with the likes of existing partners ExxonMobil, Total, Shell and ConocoPhillips over possible participation in the expansion project, which aims to boost capacity at the North Field to 110 million tonnes per annum from a current 77 million tpa. However, he also noted that other contenders were in the running to participate.

The three supermajors and US independent ConocoPhillips are already partners in Qatar’s existing LNG facilities in the industrial city of Ras Laffan.

Kaabi told the Oil & Money conference in London this week that he expects the four new mega-trains will come online at intervals of three to six months after the first starts up in 2024.

"We are on track, but it is the construction scheduling that will determine some of that," Kaabi said.

He added that there are currently three "very capable" consortia in the running for the main construction contract.

"The main contract is going to one contractor to build the trains,” he said, with the main onshore EPC contract to be firmed up by the end of this year.

QP, through related company Qatargas, is carrying out the tender process for several onshore as well as the offshore EPC packages for the expansion project.

The onshore packages, which include the liquefaction facilities, storage tanks, utilities and sulphur-handling facilities, are together thought likely to be worth upwards of $18 billion.

In April, QP issued tender documents to three short-listed consortia for work on the four 7.8 million tpa mega-trains.

The tenders were issued to a consortium of Japan’s Chiyoda and UK-based TechnipFMC, another grouping of Japan’s JGC and South Korean giant Hyundai Engineering & Construction, and a third group comprising Saipem, McDermott International and Taiwan’s CTCI. This tender package involves the EPC work for the four liquefaction trains with gas and liquid treatment facilities.

The work on storage tanks, utilities and the sulphur-handling facilities is being tendered as separate packages.

Kaabi said QP would go it alone on the whole expansion if the talks with its existing foreign LNG partners did not produce the desired result. If partners are selected, they are expected to be offered minority stakes of up to 30% in NFE. Much depends on the value the partners could bring, including in offering QP the potential to take an interest in overseas assets.

"It could be something that we want to do outside Qatar — it could be swaps, some support in the market, an offtake [arrangement]. It could be a lot of things," Kaabi said.

QP has recently been expanding its international upstream presence by farming into offshore acreage held by major international oil companies including ExxonMobil, Italy’s Eni and Total.

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QP pushes on with North Field Expansion project