Qatari national oil and gas company QatarEnergy has selected France's TotalEnergies as its first international partner in the North Field East (NFE) expansion project, dubbed "the single largest project in the history of the LNG industry."
The announcement on Sunday came at the conclusion of a competitive process that started in 2019 to select QatarEnergy’s international partners in the NFE project, which will expand Qatar’s LNG export capacity from the current 77 million tons per annum (MTPA) to 110 MTPA.
The $28.75 billion NFE project is, which includes carbon capture and sequestration, is expected to start production before the end of 2025.
A special ceremony was held at QatarEnergy’s headquarters in Doha to mark the occasion, during which Saad Sherida Al-Kaabi, the Minister of State for Energy Affairs, the President and CEO of QatarEnergy, and Patrick Pouyanné, Chairman of the Board and Chief Executive Officer of TotalEnergies, signed the partnership agreements in the presence of senior executives from QatarEnergy and TotalEnergies.
Under the agreements signed on Sunday, QatarEnergy and TotalEnergies will become partners in a new joint venture company (JV), in which QatarEnergy will hold a 75% interest while TotalEnergies will hold the remaining 25% interest.
The JV in turn will own 25% of the entire NFE project, including the 4 mega LNG trains with a combined nameplate LNG capacity of 32 MTPA.
As part of the partner selection process, QatarEnergy said it had received offers for double the equity available. This, according to QatarEnergy underscores the high-quality investment case of the NFE project.
"More partners are slated to join the NFE Project, as final terms have been agreed and the relevant announcements will be made soon," QatarEnergy said.