Bad weather forced the closure of Qatar's oil export terminal at Al-Shaheen on Monday and has delayed loading of a million barrels of crude, a shipper said on Monday. Inchcape Shipping Services said on its website that the port was shut at 0800 (0500 GMT). High wind speeds forced the closure, one operator said.
"There are two tankers that were each due to load around 500,000 barrels and have not been able to," she said. Other ports in Qatar were not closed, she added.
Qatar is the smallest producer in the Organisation of the Petroleum Exporting Countries (Opec). It produced around 800,000 barrels per day (bpd) in June, according to a Reuters survey.
The Al-Shaheen oilfield is operated by Denmark's A.P. Moeller-Maersk Maersk is in the midst of a $5 billion project to expand production capacity at the field to 525,000 bpd at the end of 2009 from around 240,000 bpd in 2006.