QatarEnergy secures ten-year naphtha deal with Eneos

Japanese refining and petrochemical company Eneos Corp. has signed up for up to 9 million tonnes/year (MMtpa) of naphtha over ten years from QatarEnergy.

This is the third long-term naphtha sale announced by state-owned QatarEnergy, following agreements with another Japanese company, Idemitsu Kosan Co, and India’s Haldia Petrochemicals.

“This agreement builds on our successful and long-standing relationship with one of our valued Japanese partners”, QatarEnergy chief executive Saad Sherida Al-Kaabi, who is also Qatar’s minister of state for energy affairs, commented.

QatarEnergy said, “This agreement is the largest and longest commitment in more than a decade of collaborations between the two companies”.

Earlier it announced an agreement to supply Haldia Petrochemicals with up to 2 MMtpa of naphtha for ten years through the Indian company’s Singapore-based trading arm, HPL Global Pte Ltd. This is also the biggest commitment between QatarEnergy and Haldia Petrochemicals according to QatarEnergy.

Al-Kaabi said Qatar remains a reliable energy supplier to India and that the agreement represents QatarEnergy’s “continued commitment to contributing to India’s economic growth trajectory”.

Then earlier as well, QatarEnergy said it had penned an agreement to supply up to 6 MMtpa of naphtha to Idemitsu Kosan for ten years also.

QatarEnergy produces naphtha through the Oryx and Pearl gas-to-liquids (GTL) plants.

Oryx GTL, a joint asset with 49% owner Sasol Ltd. that was put into service 2006, produces 34,000 barrels per day (bpd) of naphtha, diesel and liquefied petroleum gas. The owners plan to expand the capacity to 100,000 bpd.

Pearl GTL is a revenue-sharing asset with Shell PLC. The two-train project went onstream 2011. It processes about 1.6 billion cu ft a day of wellhead gas from Qatar’s North Field. The plant is expected to process around 3 billion barrels-of-oil-equivalent over its lifetime.

The Gulf state’s known gas reserves have risen to over 2,000 trillion cu ft, according to a QatarEnergy report this year. Discovered 1971, the North Field is the largest gas field in the world spanning 2.3 sq miles or about half of Qatar’s land area, according to QatarEnergy. It has averaged over 700 million cu ft per day in gas production.

QatarEnergy is further developing the field to grow its liquefied natural gas production from the current 77 MMtpa to 142 MMtpa by 2030.

QatarEnergy announced the start of construction in two of the three North Field expansion projects in 2023.