Qatar Daily News

Australian outfit Neptune Marine is primed to start a $20 million combined services subsea inspection contract for Qatargas, the company’s first major project in the Middle East.

The three year deal, which is due to start early in the new year, covers the inspection of Qatargas platforms, offshore pipelines and subsea connection facilities which lie in the Arabian Gulf.

Under the terms of the contract, Neptune will provide a dynamically positioned (DP II) vessel bundled with a range of services including ROVs, hydrographic survey, diving and pipeline stabilisation.
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Gas-rich Qatar plans to move forward, with modest delays, in massive investments in its gas sector despite the sour economic climate, officials said.

Faisal al-Suwaidi, chief executive of the state-owned Qatargas, said billions in investments were slated for major gas projects across the globe. Many, however, could see a two- or three-year lag in order to create higher demand, the Financial Times reports.

Suwaidi said if all projects moved forward in 2009, the supply-demand ratio in the energy sector would reach parity.

“But now, by 2014 you will see a big gap between supply and demand … because of the number of projects that have been either shelved, canceled or postponed,” he said.
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Menafn reported that Mr H E Abdullah bin Hamad Al Attiyah Qatar’s deputy Premier and minister of energy receiving a memento from Mr Fu Chengyu president of China National Offshore Oil Company during the launching ceremony of CNOOC office in Doha, as the Minister of State for Energy and Industrial Affairs H E Dr Mohamed Saleh Al Sada looks on.

Qatar will be supplying a total of 5 million tonnes per year of gas to China starting from 2010 to 2011 over the next 25 years, underscoring increasingly strong economic and political ties between the two countries.

Mr H E Abdullah bin Hamad Al Attiyah Qatar’s deputy Premier and minister of energy and industry said that “The first supply of gas to Petrochina will start next year and to China National Offshore Oil Company by 2010 to 2011. Petrochina will get a total of 3 million tonnes per annum and CNOOC, 2 million tonnes per annum. The gas will be supplied from Qatargas.”
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Four new liquefied natural gas (LNG) carriers built for Qatargas by Samsung Heavy Industries are docked at the Samsung Heavy Industries shipyard on Goje Island for their naming ceremony yesterday. The ships – three of which are the world’s largest – can sail at a maximum speed of 19.5 knots. A total of seven LNG carriers ordered by Qatar from Samsung and Hyundai Heavy Industries were named over the past few days and three more are to be formally given their titles.

Qatar, the world’s biggest exporter of liquefied natural gas, and Royal Dutch Shell Plc, will probably delay the start of their Qatargas 4 LNG project by at least a year until 2011, an official working on the project said.

“Qatargas 4 won’t be ready before 2011 or 2012,” Nawid Kashani-Shirazi, senior process manager of gas treatment at BASF SE, which is handling process technology licensing for parts of the plant, said in an interview in Abu Dhabi yesterday.

Qatar is building a series of gas export facilities, the biggest of their kind, that are all suffering delays as the nation considers the demands on its gas fields and the cost of building complex projects simultaneously.

“Qatargas 2 has been in commissioning phase for the past two months, and the first drop of LNG is expected this month, and Qatargas 3 is planned to start sometime in the first half of next year,” Kashani-Shirazi said, while attending The Energy Exchange’s Gas Arabia conference.
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The majority of Qatar’s listed endangered species are marine ones. This is contrary to the global trend, wherein terrestrial species predominantly make up the endangered group, said the Doha-based environmental expert Dr Iain Macdonald.

Macdonald, of the Safety, Environment and Quality Department, QatarGas, said Qatar is home to at least 955 marine species. Of this, the International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN) has included 27 in its “Red List” of threatened species. The IUCN is the world’s oldest and largest global environmental network.

Among some of the more commonly known endangered species in Qatari waters are various species of sea turtle. Sharks are well represented on the endangered list.

In addition to marine pollution, land-based pollution has significant impact on marine biodiversity in Qatar. Qatar, along with its neighboring states, faces this issue due to the structure of the Gulf and the high number of coastal industries in the region.
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Invensys Process Systems (IPS), a global technology, software and consulting firm, today announced that it has signed a multi-million dollar contract with Qatargas, one of the world’s major producers of liquefied natural gas, to complete a major automation upgrade at the Qatar Gas 1 facility in the Qatar Ras Laffan Industrial City.

Under the terms of the contract, IPS will upgrade control processors, gateways, local area networks and network security with its Foxboro I/A Series® distributed control system (DCS) Version 8, including mesh architecture.

“Our goal is to keep our clients’ distributed control systems running at peak performance levels,” said Mohsen Sorour, IPS Business Development Manager. “Qatargas’ existing Foxboro I/A Series DCS system runs versions 6 and 7. IPS will migrate this nodebus-based system to our latest mesh-based technology, and by retaining existing field wiring and system cabinets and using online upgrade procedures, we can ensure that plant downtime is kept to an absolute minimum.”

The upgrade will give Qatargas improved compatibility between different generations of system components at Qatar Gas 1, as well as extend the lifecycle of the overall control system there.
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