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Qatar Producing Crude Oil At Full Capacity

Qatar Producing Crude Oil At Full Capacity
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Παρ, 18 Μαΐου 2012 - 18:26
Qatar is producing crude oil at full capacity and sticking to its OPEC quota, Minister of Energy and Industry Mohammed Bin Saleh Al-Sada said Friday.
Qatar is producing crude oil at full capacity and sticking to its OPEC quota, Minister of Energy and Industry Mohammed Bin Saleh Al-Sada said Friday.

Al-Sada is on a state visit to South Korea . The two countries held a meeting to discuss energy and industrial cooperation in Seoul Friday.

Qatar has a combined oil and condensate output of 1.45 million to 1.5 million barrels a day, Al-Sada told reporters on the sidelines of the meeting.

The country's condensate output has been gradually increasing and is "almost now equivalent to crude oil," he said, without mentioning figures. "We regard condensate as a crude oil."

Qatar plans to produce more condensate in the coming years and expects output to eventually exceed crude production, he added.

Earlier in the day, Minister of Knowledge Economy Hong Sukwoo asked Al-Sada to increase output at the Al-Shaheen oil field and give South Korean refiners priority in contracting the additional supply, the ministry said in a statement.

South Korea , which relies Iran for about 10% of its crude, has been buying more from Middle Eastern countries including Qatar , as importers of Iranian oil cut shipments globally ahead of U.S. and EU sanctions.

South Korea imported 26.754 million barrels of Qatari crude in the January-March quarter, equivalent to 294,000 barrels a day, up 8.3% from the same period last year, data from Korea National Oil Corp showed.

Local refiners currently import 75,000 barrels a day of Al-Shaheen's output under long-term contracts, an official at the ministry's energy resources policy division said.

Qatar is one of the top five suppliers of crude oil and the top supplier of natural gas to South Korea .

Crude-oil output by the Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries continued to rise in April, a Dow Jones survey showed, as Iraq offset a decline in Iran's production, which hit a 20-year low after western sanctions over its nuclear program hit oil exports.

Crude production from its 12 members rose by 115,000 barrels a day to 31.820 million barrels a day, although the official OPEC production ceiling is 30 million barrels a day, a Dow Jones Newswires survey of industry sources and analysts showed.

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