QPI hopes to expand Centrica deal in N America

REUTERS

DOHA

QATAR Petroleum International (QPI) hopes to expand her new deal with Great Britain Centrica by acquiring more gas or tight oil stocks in North America, the chief executive said.

Centrica and QPI said in April that they would buy Suncor Energy Inc. gas company in Canada for C $ 1 billion ($ 986.73 million) in its first acquisition since the agreement in 2011 to hunt for assets all over the world.

"We are looking at upstream business in the United States ... both in oil and gas, but especially in gas. With everything happens in the United States today we try to register a position, "said Nasser Khalil al Jaidah in an interview on Tuesday.

"We hope to expand the Centrica deal in North America, through acquisitions and other resources. Not the oil-sand, but gas or oil or tight oil. " The Canadian assets that Centrica and QPI, the international branch of the world's largest exporter of LNG, bought don't produce enough gas to merit construction of an LNG-terminal for output.

But ramping up production from these fields and buy more produce could potentially start LNG exports from assets see QPI Canada, he said.

"What we are trying to do now is extensive cooperation with international energy companies. This is the vehicle that we choose, for the moment, "said Jaidah. A shale gas boom in North America over the past decade has forced Qatar Petroleum (QP) new buyers are looking for billions of dollars worth of LNG that it had planned to sell to the United States.

The import terminals built for receiving LNG can start exporting U.S. gas to global markets in a few years, increasing competition for sales that Qatari LNG exporters can cover themselves against by expanding their production in North America.

Last week, Exxon Mobil and QP said that they plan to ship LNG to Britain as a plan to switch the Golden Pass Qatari LNG import terminal in Texas at a plant output has been approved by the US authorities.

Jaidah said that LNG of Golden Pass on the US Gulf coast around the Atlantic basin, in which Western Europe and Latin America markets the thriving consume LNG could be sold.

Qatar has a moratorium on further gas export projects from its North field in the Middle East, QPI looking abroad to ask for further growth, using some of the proceeds from the export of billions of dollar LNG.

QPI is considering investments in upstream projects in North Africa and in European utilities, he said, with no limit on investments for the expansion around the world.