QatarEnergy secures $3 billion from Chinese banks — OilPrice

Qatar’s state energy company QatarEnergy has secured a five-year $3 billion loan from four Chinese banks, OilPrice reports. The publication calls it the largest corporate loan for a Qatari state entity provided exclusively by Chinese lenders.

Loan terms

According to OilPrice, citing Bloomberg analysis, the five-year syndicated loan was financed by Bank of China, Industrial and Commercial Bank of China, Agricultural Bank of China, and China Construction Bank (Asia). The loan carries an interest rate of 50 basis points above the US Secured Overnight Financing Rate, SOFR.

OilPrice also reports that Chinese lending to borrowers in Gulf countries, excluding bilateral loans, increased more than fivefold last year to a record $11.5 billion.

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Expansion of LNG capacity

Separately, the publication claims that Iranian strikes on March 18 and 19 damaged two gas liquefaction process trains in the industrial city of Ras Laffan, as well as Shell’s Pearl GTL plant. According to OilPrice, this knocked out 17% of Qatar’s LNG export capacity, or 12.8 million tonnes per year.

As OilPrice writes, QatarEnergy is accelerating the North Field East project. It envisages four new gas liquefaction trains at North Field East and two at North Field South, each with a capacity of 8 million tonnes per year. Together, they are expected to add 48 million tonnes of annual LNG production by 2029.

The company has also announced North Field West projects, which are to increase LNG production from 77 million to 142 million tonnes per year by the end of the decade. OilPrice notes that the first North Field East train may reportedly begin operating as early as next month, whereas QatarEnergy chief Saad Sherida al-Kaabi had previously cited the first half of 2027 as the target.