Qatar plans to use its massive Liquified Natural Gas (LNG) expansion to transform the country into the world's largest super-chilled fuel, according to the Minister of Energy, Saad al-Kaabi. "I think we will be one of the largest, if not the largest, LNG trader in the world," al- Kaabi, said in an interview with Bloomberg TV. While, Qatar is one of the largest producers of LNG, it has often only delivered the fuel to long-term clients and has not historically contributed to much trading activity. al-Kaabi further said, "we saw that a lot of our volume has been traded in some of the markets, and we think we can do this very well because of our size and because this competency was missing as far as trading was concerned." Qatar intends to increase its LNG production capacity by more than 60 percent to 126 million tons per year by the end of the current decade. It will accomplish that through the North Field East development, scheduled to start up in 2026, and North Field South, which will be ready to export in 2027.
