US petrol giant Exxon-Mobil Corp has told Abu Dhabi that it wants to participate in a project to supply the United Arab Emirates and Oman with natural gas from Qatar, the official WAM news agency reported.
A senior Exxon-Mobil executive told Emirati minister of state for foreign affairs, Sheikh Hamdan bin Zayed al-Nahyan, that he hoped his company could "participate as a partner in Project Dolphin," the report said.
Project Dolphin foresees the production of natural gas from Qatar's offshore North Field site and the construction of a 350-kilometre (220-mile) pipeline to bring the gas to the industrial zones of Al-Tawilah in Abu Dhabi and Djebel Ali in Dubai.
French oil group TotalFinaElf is one of the main investors in the $8-$10 billion project in which it is working alongside the UAE Offsets Group, which owns 51 percent, and and US transporter Enron, which has 24.5 percent, the same amount as the French group.
The pipeline could later be extended to Pakistan and even India. Qatar has the third largest natural gas reserves in the world, after Russia and Iran, with an estimated 13,000 billion cubic metres. — (AFP)
© Agence France Presse
© 2001 Mena Report (www.menareport.com)
