Qatar continues to heavily rely on liquefied natural gas (LNG) for its economy ranking as the world's biggest exporter with around 77.8 million tons in 2019.
According to the US Energy Information Administration (EIA), the state-owned Qatar Petroleum (QP) controls all aspects of Qatar’s upstream and downstream oil and natural gas sectors, including exploration, production, transport, storage, marketing, and the sale of natural gas, LNG, natural gas liquids, gas-to-liquids (GTL), crude oil, refined products, and petrochemicals and fertilizers.
According to EIA, the country has the world's third-largest natural gas reserves at around 25 trillion cubic meters corresponding to 12.5% of the world’s natural gas reserves after Russia and Iran.
In 2018, Qatar consumed around 42 billion cubic meters of natural gas and produced 175.5 billion cubic meters of gas, according to BP's Statistical Review of World Energy.
Historically, most of Qatar’s LNG exports were part of long-term, oil-indexed contracts, but over the past few years, the country began to shift to more short-term contracts and spot-market sales.
The country sends natural gas via pipelines to Oman and the United Arab Emirates and has sold LNG to over 20 different countries worldwide in 2019, the majority of which at 23.5 million tons was exported to Europe, the latest data from the International Gas Union (IGU) showed.
According to the IGU, in Asia, South Korea received 11.1 million tons of Qatari LNG and Japan imported 8.7 million tons of LNG from Qatar. India also received 9.7 million tons of LNG from Qatar and China 8.5 million tons while 6.6 million tons of LNG was sent to the UK.
Also, data from BP shows that the country produces all its electricity from natural gas, and in 2018 generated 39.5 terawatt-hours. The country, with a population of around 3 million, meets all of its natural gas demand from domestic sources.
Qatar is also a crude oil producer and has been a member of the Organization of the Petroleum Exporting Countries (OPEC) since 1961 although its output was the second-lowest in the organization. In January 2019, it decided to leave the oil cartel to focus more on natural gas production and investments.
According to BP Statistics, Qatar produced 1.88 million barrels of oil per day in 2018, representing a 2% share of the global market. Its proved oil reserves total 2.6 billion barrels with a 1.5% global share.
The statistics show the country's daily oil refining capacity at 429 thousand barrels is only a 0.4% share of the global market.
It consumes 328 thousand barrels of oil per day and had 101.2 million tons of carbon dioxide in 2018 equivalent to a 0.3% share of total emissions.
The country’s energy plans do not include coal usage or nuclear power.
By Murat Temizer
Anadolu Agency
energy@aa.com.tr