French utility Electricite de France's EDF Trading subsidiary and Qatar-based RasGas have signed a mid-term liquefied natural gas supply agreement. The deal will facilitate Qatari liquefied natural gas deliveries to markets in northwest Europe.
The supply agreement with flexibility is for interruptible deliveries of up to 3.4 million tonnes of liquid natural gas (LNG) per year, equivalent to approximately 4.5 billion cubic meters of natural gas per year. The LNG will be sourced from one of RasGas’s existing LNG production trains in Qatar, and will be delivered ex-ship at the Zeebrugge LNG terminal in Belgium.
The agreement, which will last approximately four and a half years, is consistent with the RasGas shareholders’ and Qatar’s long-term strategy for expanding and diversifying its natural gas market. It also highlights a successful effort between RasGas, its shareholders Qatar Petroleum and ExxonMobil, and the EDF Group.
Pierre Gadonneix, chairman and CEO of EDF, said: By this agreement the EDF Group becomes one of the main counterparties with RasGas in Europe. It marks another step in the implementation of the EDF Group’s strategy to strengthen its positions in natural gas.
The contract marks the establishment of a long-term relationship between EDF and RasGas and furthers the existing positions of EDF in the LNG business.
EDF’s recent LNG activities have included the launch of studies for a regasification terminal project in Dunkirk, France and the acquisition, by its subsidiary EDF Trading, of regasification capacity at the Montoir-de-Bretagne LNG terminal in France over a two-year period.