Qatar and Dolphin Energy will sign the final development and production sharing agreement (DPSA) for a multi-billion-dollar project to deliver Qatari gas abroad "shortly", the UAE Offsets Group (UOG) said Sunday October 14.
"The development and production sharing agreement (DPSA) with Qatar Petroleum (QP) is due to be signed shortly," UOG said in a statement. The state-run UOG added that Dolphin Energy will select by early next year an oil major to become a strategic partner in the project.
"Over the coming weeks, the international oil companies will be given additional data and invited to submit their offers by late December. One of them is scheduled to be selected in early 2002," UOG said.
UOG held separate negotiations last week with five short listed oil majors -- Conoco, ExxonMobil and Occidental Petroleum of the United States, BP International and the Anglo-Dutch firm Shell -- to replace the US firm Enron Corp., which withdrew from the venture in May and transferred its 24.5 percent stake to UOG.
Enron's role was to build a 350-kilometer (220-mile) pipeline under the Gulf between Qatar and Abu Dhabi. The Dolphin project aims to create a regional grid taking gas from Qatar to Abu Dhabi, Dubai, Oman and eventually Pakistan.
In a project estimated at an overall cost of up to $10 billion, the gas is to be transported by undersea pipeline from Qatar to the Abu Dhabi coast. The gas will be distributed inside Abu Dhabi and neighboring Dubai through existing networks and will be transported between the two through a pipeline for which technical bids have already been submitted.
The pipeline will then continue overland to Oman and from there to Pakistan through an undersea pipeline. The extension to Pakistan is expected to cost up to an additional three billion dollars. — (AFP, Abu Dhabi)
© Agence France Presse 2001
© 2001 Mena Report (www.menareport.com)
