Qatar Petroleum will borrow heavily in 2014

Qatar Petroleum, the Gulf state’s energy giant, expects to borrow heavily in 2014 to finance new industrial projects, a senior company official said on Wednesday.

“We will approach the bank market, capital markets as well as consider conventional bonds and sukuk as part of the financing plan,” Meshaal al-Mahmoud, the company’s head of project finance, told reporters at a conference in Doha. “We don’t expect to issue anything this year or next year.”

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The financing will be for three projects: Qatar’s Shell petrochemical plant, the Qapco petrochemical plant, and a planned aromatics plant at Qatar’s industrial city of Ras Laffan, he said. The aromatics plant would be built “with QP and partners. It is still in the early stages,” Mahmoud said, declining to name a potential partner or give the value of the project.

He also said Qatar Petroleum planned $25 billion worth of downstream projects over the next five years.

source: Reuters