Qatar has signed three agreements for long-term LNG gas supply to Europe.
After signing contracts with Total Energy and Shell, QatarEnergy signed an agreement with Eni to supply LNG to Italy for 27 years.
QatarEnergy made an official statement about this. According to the agreement, LNG will be delivered to FSRU Italia, a floating storage and regasification facility located in the port of Piombino in the Tuscany region.
LNG deliveries are expected to begin in 2026 for a 27-year term and will come from a joint venture between QatarEnergy and Eni, which has an interest in Qatar’s North Field East (NFE) expansion project.
Saad Sherida Al-Kaabi, Minister of Energy, President and CEO of QatarEnergy, and Claudio Descalzi, CEO of Eni, signed the agreement.
“Together, we will continue to demonstrate our commitment to European markets in general and the Italian market in particular. Since 2009, Qatar’s LNG has been arriving at the Adriatic LNG terminal in the northern Adriatic to meet more than 10% of Italy’s natural gas needs,” said the QatarEnergy CEO.
Qatar signed a 27-year gas supply agreement with French energy company TotalEnergies a week before. Qatar will supply 4.8 billion cubic meters of gas per year to France after signing two contracts with TotalEnergies last year for a share in a major project to expand the North Field gas field in the Persian Gulf country.
The signing of agreements by European countries on long-term LNG supplies from Qatar demonstrates their desire to diversify supplies and get rid of dependence on the Russian LNG market.
After Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine last year, European countries are trying to replace lost natural gas supplies after Russia’s withdrawal from the market.
As part of the expansion of the North Field, the world’s largest natural gas field stretching from the Persian Gulf to Iran, Qatar intends to increase its liquefied natural gas (LNG) production by 60% or more to 126 million tons per year by 2027.
