Qatar and Dolphin Energy are set to sign the final development and production sharing agreement for a multi-billion-dollar project to deliver Qatari gas abroad in early October, the UAE Offsets Group (UOG) said Wednesday, September 5.
"The DPSA is scheduled to be signed in early October ... by UOG, TotalFinaElf and Qatar Petroleum. It will follow the detailed commercial term sheet agreement, which set out the commercial details of the DPSA," last March, UOG said in a statement.
The state-run UOG added it will also start negotiations with five international oil companies shortlisted for acquiring part of UOG's stake and becoming a strategic partner in the project by the end of the current year.
UOG shortlisted Conoco, ExxonMobil and Occidental Petroleum of the United States, BP International and the Anglo-Dutch firm Shell to replace the US firm Enron Corp., which withdrew from the venture in May and transferred its 24.5 percent stake to UOG. Enron's role was to build a 350-kilometer (220-mile) pipeline under the Gulf between Qatar and Abu Dhabi.
Invitations have also been sent out to 22 international, regional and local engineering companies for early-October bids for three separate contracts within the Dolphin project, including up and midstream front end engineering and design work and an environmental impact assessment survey.
Differences over pricing and volumes had put back the signing of the agreement for two years after a first statement of principle for Dolphin was signed by Qatar and UOG in March 1999. The Dolphin project aims to create a regional grid taking gas from Qatar to Abu Dhabi, Dubai, Oman and eventually Pakistan.
In a project estimated at an overall cost of up to $10 billion, the gas is to be transported by undersea pipeline from Qatar to the Abu Dhabi coast. The gas will be distributed inside Abu Dhabi and neighboring Dubai through existing networks and will be transported between the two through a pipeline for which technical bids have already been submitted.
The pipeline will then continue overland to Oman and from there to Pakistan through an undersea pipeline. The extension to Pakistan is expected to cost up to an additional three billion dollars. — (AFP, Abu Dhabi)
© Agence France Presse 2001
© 2001 Mena Report (www.menareport.com)
