Jordan ponders buying Qatari natural gas

Jordan is considering buying natural gas from Qatar to meet its growing needs and feed a project to construct a major domestic distribution network in Amman, the Qatari Arabic language newspaper Sharq reported on Tuesday.

Jordanian Minister of Energy and Mineral Resources Khalid Al Irani will discuss such imports during a visit to Doha in mid-October, the paper said.

“The talks will cover possible imports of some quantities of gas from Qatar. My delegation during the visit will include the oil and gas officials at the ministry,” the paper quoted El Irani as saying.

It said Jordan, which is poor in hydrocarbon resources, already gets around 150 million cubic feet of gas per day from Egypt.

In press comments in July, Al Irani said Jordan is planning to nearly quadruple its gas imports from Egypt and other countries.

Qatar has the third largest proven gas reserves in the world after Russia and Iran, estimated at nearly 25 trillion cubic metres.

The Gulf country is the world’s top LNG exporter, with sales of more than 40 million tonnes in 2009 covering three continents.

It also supplies natural gas to the UAE and Oman via a subsea pipeline operated by Dolphin Energy Ltd. Qatar is also considering selling gas to neighbouring Bahrain while planned supplies to Kuwait have been stalled by political hurdles.

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