Although it lives in the shadows of the region’s dominant oil and gas player, Saudi Aramco, state-owned Qatar Petroleum has just concluded a two-decade growth spree that made it the world’s leading source of liquefied natural gas (LNG), and a bigger oil and gas producer than ExxonMobil or Russian state oil company Rosneft PJSC.
Now, with domestic crude production declining and new offshore gas drilling off the table, the company is looking to shift into international markets, and “QP will have no problem paying for overseas expansion,” Bloomberg reports. The country’s LNG terminals have mostly been paid for, according to Qatari Energy Minister Mohammed Al Sada, and the country expects the current global natural gas glut to ease by 2021.
The news agency’s overview tracks a history in which Qatar Petroleum has been active in oil, gas, electricity—and helium, of which it is the world’s biggest exporter. But the company made its biggest mark with gas, becoming the world’s largest LNG exporter in 2006 after building 14 production plants in partnership with some of the world’s biggest fossil companies.
“By more than doubling gas and oil production since 2006, Qatar has become the world’s fourth-biggest energy supplier and wealthiest country by per capita income,” reports correspondent Mohammed Aly Sergie. “Qatar Petroleum has overtaken Rosneft and Exxon in total output, according to data compiled by Bloomberg, and the company makes and sells more LNG than any other.”
With ownership positions in the businesses that extract, process, ship, and receive its gas, the company has used its integrated supply chain to deliver the cheapest gas in the world, “an advantage QP plans to exploit as competitors in Australia and the U.S. dethrone it as the top producer by volume,” Bloomberg notes.
