Qatar Capable of Facing Shale gas Challenge

Mohammed bin Saleh Al Sada, the Minister of Energy and Industry and Chairman and Managing Director of Qatar Petroleum, has said Qatar is quite capable of responding to any possible market challenges posed by the global expansion of shale gas, Peninsula Online has reported.

The international expansion of the shale revolution will take more time to occur before it significantly impacts global LNG flows, the Minister said in an interview to The Oil & Gas Year, the online report further added. 

Replying to a query ‘in what ways has the unconventional gas revolution in the US and elsewhere reshaped Qatar’s gas export strategy’, Al Sada said: “When we embarked on the massive expansion of our LNG business 10 years ago, a key objective was to ensure we could respond to changes in the market...The role that shale gas in the US played was not anticipated to have as large of an impact as it did. However due to  the built-in flexibility of our involvement in the total value chain of the LNG business, Qatar could address and deal with the  change in LNG demand in different regions, and we are prepared ourselves to respond to these changes as and when they occurred.”

On Qatar’s increasing stakes in energy projects in Europe and Asia, the Minister said Qatar will continue to look at options to expand its upstream business all over the globe in terms of portfolio gaps and opportunities preferably with our long-term international oil partners, Peninsula said.