DUBAI-Qatar­gas said on Sat­ur­day it signed a 2.4 mil­lion tonnes per year three year con­tract to sup­ply liq­ue­fied nat­ur­al gas to Britain's Cen­tri­ca."As per the agree­ment, Qatar­gas will de­liv­er up to 2.4 mil­lion tonnes per an­num of LNG from the Qatar­gas 4 project to the UK Isle of Grain Ter­mi­nal for the next three years," it said in a state­ment.The sales and pur­chase agree­ment con­cludes an orig­i­nal agree­ment reached in Feb­ru­ary.The con­tact is Cen­tri­ca's first long-term con­tract to buy liq­ue­fied nat­ur­al gas from the world's biggest LNG ex­porter.

Qatar­gas is Britain's biggest LNG sup­pli­er through its South Hook im­port ter­mi­nal in Wales, and the con­tract to sup­ply Britain's biggest en­er­gy re­tail­er boosts the small Mid­dle East­ern coun­try's share in Eu­rope's biggest gas mar­ket.Britain ex­pand­ed its LNG re­ceiv­ing ca­pac­i­ty last year, large­ly to re­duce de­pen­dence on gas from the North Sea, and has steadi­ly in­creased im­ports of the liq­ue­fied fu­el which is warmed back to gas be­fore be­ing pumped in­to the net­work.The 4 mil­lion therms of gas to be de­liv­ered could meet a tenth of to­tal UK an­nu­al res­i­den­tial gas de­mand and a quar­ter of British Gas sales, Cen­tri­ca, which owns British Gas, said in Feb­ru­ary. (Reuters)