A pipeline to carry gas from Qatar should start supplying Oman on schedule by 2008, Oman's oil and gas minister said.

'Qatari gas will come to Oman by 2008,' Mohammad Al Rumhy said in Muscat.

'They will supply around 200 million cubic feet a day.'

The gas will flow through the Dolphin pipeline, the first cross-border gas line in the region.

Dolphin Energy aims to take up to 3.5 billion cubic feet a day of natural gas to the UAE and then later to Oman.

Doubts about the $3.5 billion project surfaced last July when Saudi Arabia told minority partners in the project, Total and Occidental Petroleum, it had reservations about the pipeline route.

Dolphin said then it had not received any objection from Saudi Arabia and in August it completed the sub-sea line.

The line is scheduled to begin supplying the UAE in 2007.

At present, Oman supplies up to 135 million cubic feet of gas per day to the UAE. But the flow will change direction in 2008 when Oman's gas consumption rises as new gas-consuming industries start.

Oman will boost gas output this year to 60 million cubic metres (2.119 billion cu ft) per day from 50 million cu m/d in the previous year through redevelopment of existing fields, Rumhy said.

Abu Dhabi's state-run Mubadala group owns 51 per cent of Dolphin, while France's Total and US Occidental Petroleum each hold a 24.5 per cent stake.