The UAE may consider importing shale gas from the US to bridge the gap between domestic demand and production, news agency Reuters say.
The UAE’s energy minister Suhail bin Mohammed al-Mazroui told Reuters reporters that the low price of US shale gas was attracting the interest of foreign buyers and that the UAE may join China, Japan, Taiwan, Spain and Chile in importing US gas.
“We may follow the same trend of considering investments in the United States and Canada to bring some of that gas back home,” he told Reuters.
Rapidly rising demand and slow production growth have made the OPEC member a net importer of gas over the past few years.
The UAE’s Abu Dhabi National Energy Company has already invested in Canada’s oil and gas sector but so far has not been publicly involved in North American natural gas export projects.
“The United Arab Emirates is seriously thinking about that now,” the minister said.
The UAE last year awarded a contract to build a liquefied natural gas (LNG) import terminal at Fujairah on its east coast. It already gets a modest volume of Qatari gas by pipeline, which helps feed its power and desalination plants.
“We have a team in Mubadala as well as in Taqa looking at the optionality. Any investment needs to go through the vetting of the board of directors, not to me as an energy minister,” he said.
Â
