Qatar GDP to grow 24.5% next year says EIU
Posted on 13 October 2009 with no comments from readers
The latest Qatar country report from the Economist Intelligence Unit points to a 24.5 per cent surge in real GDP next year, after a fall in growth to 9.2 per cent this year, as massive new Liquefied Natural Gas projects come on stream.
Qatar will therefore easily be the world’s fastest growing economy in 2010 with inflation to match. Prices will surge by 45 per cent forecasts the EIU, after just 2.8 per cent in 2009.
LNG expansion
LNG production capacity will be expanded to 77 million tonnes per year in 2010, the culmination of many years of heavy investment and planning with extensive foreign participation.
Qatar has chosen to embrace foreign direct investment rather than to abhor it for domestic political reasons and the wealth effect is clear for all to see. Qatari nationals are now among the richest people in the world per capita.
Gas contracts tend to be for a long duration and therefore revenues are more stable than from oil. However, Qatar is also a large oil producer so the impact of any weakness in oil prices next year remains a qualifying factor to the EIU forecast.
Over the forecast period gas production will surge by 90 per cent with four more super trains coming on stream. Total exports for 2010 are forecast to rise from $37.3 billion to $59.1 billion by the EIU. Qatar has signed four long-term energy deals with China in the past two years.
Equities cheap
The Qatar Government intervened in the local stock market to prevent the dramatic falls seen around the rest of the Gulf last year and consequently the recovery this year has not been as noticeable.
However, the dramatic improvement in national income forecast for 2010 is not perhaps widely appreciated and it is surprising that the stock market has not gained more.
Possibly it is just that the five-star airline Qatar Airways and the Qatar Financial Centre have done a much better job at winning worldwide attention while the oil and gas sector has been quietly investing for the future. That investment is about to pay off big time.
And if 2010 proves to be another year of global recession or sub-par growth then the Qatar growth story is going to stand out like a sore thumb.
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20 October 2009
TOKYO — China National Offshore Oil Corp (CNOOC), the country’s top offshore oil producer, has received its first cargo of liquefied natural gas (LNG) from Qatar, after a long-term supply deal signed last year, state press reported Tuesday.
The cargo, of 216,000 cu m, has arrived at CNOOC’s LNG terminal in the southern city of Shenzhen, the China Daily said.
It comes under a long-term supply agreement signed between CNOOC and Qatargas last June, under which Qatar would supply 2 million tons of LNG per annum for 25 years, the newspaper said.
“The first shipment serves as an important landmark in the energy cooperation between China and Qatar,” said Fu Chengyu, chairman of the State-owned CNOOC, at the receiving ceremony on Monday.
“It will help China improve the utilization of clean energy and optimize the energy consumption structure and strengthen CNOOC’s role in developing clean energy,” Fu was quoted as saying.
Faisal Al-Suwadi, CEO of Qatargas, said the new partnership would be highly beneficial as “the world’s largest LNG producing company has begun supplying what may become the world’s largest LNG market.”
The LNG from Qatar will be offloaded to other terminals of CNOOC to serve the booming economy in coastal areas of eastern and southern China, the report said. China will see rapid increase of natural gas consumption in the next few years, as the government is encouraging more use of clean fuels to reduce pollution, according to the report.
The deal value has not been disclosed yet, but some market observers speculated that the price of Qatari LNG would be indirectly pegged with the index of the Japan Customs-cleared Crude, which will be higher than what the domestic users can support.
© KUNA (Kuwait News Agency) 2009