Qatar asks for Saudi consent to install oil pipeline for Kuwait

Qatar expressed on Monday its hope that Saudi Arabia will approve a project as a cost of 2 billion dollars to install a pipeline through its territorial waters in order to provide Kuwait with Qatari gas.

Qatar's minister of energy and industry Abdullah al-Ateyah said in a press statement on the sideline of the Euro- Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC) seminar on the "technologies of natural gas between reality and prospects," that his country waits for the consent of Saudi Arabia to give the necessary licenses to the passage of the gas pipeline to Kuwait through its territorial waters.

Al-Ateyah added that Qatar hopes to get this license as soon as possible so as to start the implementation of this key project which falls in the course of current plans to link the GCC member states with united water, electricity and gas networks.

Qatar, which owns the third largest gas reserves in the world, had signed an initial agreement with Kuwait to erect the pipeline but Saudi Arabia has not announced its consent so far.

Kuwait made talks with Qatar in May 2004 on importing natural gas but in liquid form by tankers as a substitute for the pipelines. Kuwaiti also held similar talks in the past with Iraq to import natural gas from Iran which owns the second largest gas reserves in the world after Russia.