By Matthew Brown
QATAR, the world’s largest shipper of natural gas, will consider selling gas in euros, instead of dollars, HE the Finance Minister Yousef Hussain Kamal said, reducing global demand for the US currency.
Qatar would consider selling gas in euros if a customer requested a “special contract,” Kamal, who is also in charge of the Economy and Commerce Ministry, said in an interview in Doha yesterday.
Qatar’s willingness to sell gas in euros “depends on how much we have to have different currency allocations in our portfolio,” he said.
Selling gas in dollars increases the demand for the US currency, maintaining its value versus other major currencies. Other energy producers, including Iran, Venezuela and Indonesia, are already looking to sell their commodities, currently priced in dollars, in euros.
Moreover, the United Arab Emirates will convert 8% of its foreign-exchange reserves to euros from dollars before September, the country’s central bank governor said on December 24. Syria has also said it will replace dollar holdings with the euro.
The dollar has fallen almost 9% against the euro in the past 12 months as concern the US may struggle to finance its current account deficit, the broadest measure of trade in goods and services, has grown.
The deficit widened to $225.6bn in the third quarter, while oil producers in the Middle East and central Asia ran a current account surplus of $322bn for all of 2006, according to the IMF.
Kamal also said Qatar favoured sharing information with other gas exporters even though it’s opposed to the setting up a group modelled on Opec to control prices and supplies.
“At this time, we don’t have (an Opec-style group) on our agenda,” Kamal said. “Everyone will appreciate sharing information, about the market, about capacity, about technology, about the environment.”
Russia’s President Vladimir Putin, who overseas the world’s largest gas reserves, said on February 1 Russia may consider forming a gas group similar to the 12-member Organisation of Petroleum Exporting Countries to co-ordinate policy. Putin is due to visit Qatar on February 12.
Iran will ask members of the Gas Exporting Countries Forum to turn the body into an Opec-style group to control natural gas pricing and supplies, Iran’s oil ministry said last week.
However, Qatar’s Second Deputy Premier and Energy Minister HE Abdullah bin Hamad al-Attiyah said at the Abu Dhabi Economic Forum in the United Arab Emirates last Monday: “It’s very difficult because contractually gas is very different”.
By 2012, Qatar plans to have 14 trains producing 77mn tons a year. Six will produce 7.8mn tons a year each, making them the world’s largest, or twice the size of an average unit elsewhere. – Bloomberg |
