Qatar's Rasgas company signed a deal with a Taiwanese firm Sunday to deliver 1.8 million tons of liquefied natural gas (LNG) annually for 25 years starting in 2003, a company official said.
The deal was signed in Doha by Finance Minister and Rasgas chairman Youssef Hussein Kamal, and Lee Tuan-Yu, president of Tung Ting Gas Co., the official said.
Rasgas, which started production last May, signed its first export deal in May to deliver 135,230 cubic meters (4.73 million cubic feet) of LNG to South Korea's Korea Gas Corporation in 19,000 shipments over 25 years.
This deal is Rasgas's first with a Taiwanese firm.
Rasgas, Qatar's second LNG venture, is jointly owned by state-controlled Qatar General Petroleum Corporation (Qatar gas) which holds 63 percent and Mobil with 25 percent, while the rest is in the hands of Korean and Japanese companies.
On October 10, Energy Minister Abdullah bin Hamad al-Attiya said Rasgas was studying quadrupling production capacity to 20 million tons a year between 2004 and 2007 to meet demand in Eruope and Asia.
Rasgas announced in April that its second LNG train had gone into production doubling capacity to five million tons a year.
Qatar gas started exports to Japan in 1997 amounting to almost all its production of six million tons of LNG per year.
The tiny emirate is home to just 522,000 people, four-fifths of whom are expatriates, and sits on top of the world's third largest gas reserves after Russia and Iran.
Qatar's huge offshore North Field contains proven non-associated reserves of more than 10 trillion cubic meters (350 trillion cubic feet) -- DOHA (AFP)
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