Qatar honours former CEO of Exxon with an LNG carrier

QatarEnergy has named a new LNG carrier after former Exxon chief executive and energy secretary Rex Tillerson. The unusual move honors the supermajor’s role in the development of Qatar’s LNG industry and his legacy in energy.
The tanker is part of a batch of 12 LNG carriers that Qatar ordered with a Chinese shipbuilder to secure transport capacity for its future LNG production expansion. Last year, the United States overtook Qatar as the world’s largest LNG exporter, but Qatar has a huge expansion program underway to boost its export capacity by 85% from current levels by 2030.
This boost will in absolute terms mean a production capacity expansion from 77 million tons annually to as much as 142 million tons annually.
As the U.S. paused permit approvals for new LNG export projects earlier this year, adding uncertainty about the outlook for U.S. supply from the late 2020s onwards, Qatar is forging ahead with capacity expansion plans – and now new vessel charter deals – which could make it a number-one exporter of LNG once again later this decade.
As part of these expansion plans, earlier this year QatarEnergy said it had signed long-term time charter party (TCP) agreements with four international shipowners for the operation of 19 new conventional-size LNG vessels.
With demand for liquefied natural gas set to increase by 50% by 2040, according to a forecast from Shell, Qatar has no time to waste while the United States boosts its own LNG export capacity, even with the pause in new approvals. Unlike U.S. developers, however, QatarEnergy is betting on long-term supply contracts. Just this year, the state company signed a slew of such deals.
“While we expect existing LNG buyers to wait in the short term, these and other potential new buyers could start to look at competing projects outside of the US, such as those in Canada, Australia, and particularly Qatar, as alternative supply sources,” Giles Farrer, head of gas and LNG asset research at Wood Mackenzie, said in April.

Source: oilprice.com

EntekHub.com

All Author Posts