Qatar will be back to normal production of liquefied natural gas in a few weeks, the country’s prime minister, Sheikh Mohammed bin Abdulrahman al-Thani, told the Financial Times today.
“Within a few weeks, production will come back to normal, except the damaged facility,” he said. “Our teams have been mobilised already for a few weeks. QatarEnergy is preparing for operations to come back to normal as soon as the situation in the strait normalises.”
Al-Thani also told the FT that it was essential to set up a hotline between Washington and Tehran to avoid what he called “disinformation” related to tanker traffic in the Strait of Hormuz and coordinate said traffic while mines are being cleared from the chokepoint.
Right now, he said, “anyone who just wants to mess around” could tap communication systems for the shipping industry and tell ships “‘Go back, we are going to fire, we are the IRGC [Iran’s Revolutionary Guards]’.”
“That’s what we are getting sometimes,” Al-Thani explained. “So the hotline’s purpose is to make sure that any ship that gets any type of threat is to be verified by Iran… and to let the ship pass safely.”
Qatar has been eager to restart its LNG exports, after declaring force majeure on shipments following Iranian strikes on the Ras Laffan complex in the early days of the war with the United States and Israel.
State firm QatarEnergy, which curtailed LNG output in early March before an LNG facility was hit by Iranian missiles in mid-March, last week told its customers that it could restore about 50% of its production capacity within a month after safe navigation through the Strait of Hormuz is restored. Within two months, Qatar could return 80% of its capacity, according to unnamed sources who spoke to Bloomberg.
Earlier this week, reports emerged saying Qatari-linked LNG carriers were en route to the Persian Gulf to load superchilled gas.
By Irina Slav for Oilprice.com
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