QatarEnergy 'always ready' for expansion of urea production portfolio: Al-Kaabi

QatarEnergy is "always ready for expansion” of its urea production portfolio, noted HE the Minister of State for Energy Affairs, Saad bin Sherida al-Kaabi.Doubling Qatar’s annual urea production capacity to 12.4mn tonnes, QatarEnergy announced a world-scale urea fertiliser complex at Mesaieed Industrial City, which will make Qatar the world’s largest urea exporter by 2030.Speaking to Gulf Times on Sunday, al-Kaabi said, "QatarEnergy is always ready for this expansion...the market I hope will be ready. As part of the expansion, four trains will be sequentially added. We are confident that the market can withstand the volumes... and it needs that volume. That is why we are embarking on this project. By God’s grace, we have been so far right in our prediction of the markets. Urea will not be any different in our view.”"When we looked at the market for urea in the future, with the growth of humanity today, with 1.5 to 2bn people that will be joining us in the next 20-30 years, the urea requirement for food production will be exponentially increasing," al-Kaabi said.Minister al-Kaabi said, "We have been producing ammonia and urea in Qatar for over 50 years. Today, we are expanding our experience and further solidifying our position by this unprecedented mega project that will make the State of Qatar the world’s largest urea producer, playing a crucial role in ensuring food security for hundreds of millions of people around the globe, day after day.”He noted: "Developing this project in Mesaieed Industrial City will ensure the optimum utilisation of the excellent existing infrastructure for the petrochemical and fertiliser industries, including the city’s export port, which is one of the largest fertiliser and petrochemical export facilities in the Mena region. It will also establish Mesaieed as the urea production capital of the world.”Al-Kaabi added the construction of four new production lines for urea, a key ingredient in fertilisers, would boost output by 106%. He said the first production line would begin before 2030.