Maersk to finish Qatar Shaheen oilfield project Q1

Danish shipping and oil group AP Moller-Maersk would complete the expansion of Qatar's al-Shaheen oilfield during the first quarter of 2010, executives at the company said on Tuesday. The $6.2bn project initially aimed to boost capacity at the field to 525,000 barrels per day from around 240,000 bpd. But Qatar has limited actual output from the field to 300,000 bpd due to its adherence to Opec quotas, Maersk Oil Qatar's Deputy Managing Director Faisal al-Thani said in a speech at an industry event in Doha. Work on the largest offshore installations of the project was completed in the fourth quarter last year, Karsten Jensen, technical director of Maersk Oil in Qatar, told Reuters in an e-mailed statement on Tuesday. All that remained was to link the platforms and pipelines and to test them, he said. Qatar is one of Opec's smallest members and its output is constrained by the group's production targets. Opec made pledges to cut output by a record amount in 2008 to match a sharp fall in demand provoked by global economic slowdown. The group has stuck to the limits since then, and the al-Shaheen field has pumped below capacity.