They will add gas: will Qatar be able to crush the global LNG market

Marcel Salikhov, Director of the Center for Economic Expertise, National Research University Higher School of Economics commented to Izvestia on the prospects for developing the global LNG market.

Quatar Petroleum, the state oil company of Qatar, announced plans to increase LNG supplies from the current 77 million tons to 110 million tons by 2025 in the coming years and to 126 million tons by 2027, that is, by 43%. Investments in the project will amount to $ 29 billion, of which a little less than half - for construction of new facilities. The launch is scheduled for late 2025.

Now Qatar already holds the lead in the LNG market - 26.5%. But the primacy is not indisputable: the gap from the closest pursuer - Australia is 0.5%. The third and fourth places are occupied by the United States (14.7%) and Russia (10%).

“In recent years, the global LNG market has been developing quite actively. In the last 6 years alone, production has grown by 55%, from 244 million to 378 million tons/year. Based on current investment projects, one can expect that by 2025 global capacities will increase by another 20%,” Marcel Salikhov, Director of the Center for Economic Expertise at the Higher School of Economics, calculated for Izvestia. According to him, Russia is a major player in this market.

The expert noted that even the pandemic and falling prices could not reduce the export of LNG from Russia - it grew by 4.5%, to 30.2 million tons. The main buyers are Asian countries (Japan, South Korea, China), as well as Belgium and France. According to Salikhov, the LNG market will maintain positive dynamics in the foreseeable future.

Qatar has long been the largest LNG producer, but Australia has almost caught up with the Middle East emirate, Marcel Salikhov adds.

“Qatar has long followed a passive strategy and did not invest in expanding production. Over the past 10 years, Qatar's LNG production capacity has remained at the level of 77–78 million tons per year, despite the fact that gas reserves (the North Pars field) allow increasing gas production and LNG production,” said the expert.