Doha/Beijing: – US defence headquarters, Pentagon, has threatened the Middle Eastern countries that if they establish cooperation with China, it will threaten the security of the United States. However, a few days after this, China and Qatar signed a major gas supply agreement. Qatar’s fuel minister announced that Qatar Energy would supply gas to China for 27 years. The agreement between China and Qatar is attracting attention when European countries face a fuel crisis due to the Russia-Ukraine conflict.
According to this agreement, Qatar Energy will supply 4 million tons of natural gas to China Petroleum and Chemical Corporation-Sinopec annually from their North Field East (NFE) project. This gas supply from Qatar to China will continue for the next 27 years and the government of Qatar claims that this is the longest agreement ever signed. NFE is the largest natural gas reserve in the world. Iran also has rights over a certain part of this.
After the discovery of NFE, Qatar’s natural gas reserves have increased significantly and by 2027, Qatar is expected to extract more than 120 million tons of reserves per year from this region. China has become the first country to get gas supply from this project. China is making efforts to secure all the gas extracted from this area. But Western companies have investments in this Qatari project. Therefore, it is claimed that Western countries are challenging China to get the said project.
Until now, China, Japan and South Korea were leading importers of natural gas from Qatar. Of these, China is claimed to have started increasing its natural gas reserves since the last few years. But like Asian countries, European countries are now trying hard to make such agreements with Qatar.
Like China, other European companies are also in talks to import natural gas from Qatar. European countries are facing a massive fuel crisis since the Russia-Ukraine conflict broke out. Fuel prices in Europe have flared up and it is being warned that if the situation continues, there will be a power crisis in Europe and the industry associated with it will be hit. Europe is also seriously considering sourcing gas from Qatar on a long-term basis.
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