Qatar plans to shut the world's largest liquefied natural gas (LNG) facility for a few weeks of maintenance in October, a spokesperson at Qatargas said on Tuesday.

Qatar is the world's largest exporter of LNG, which is gas chilled to liquid form for export. It started up the Qatargas 4 LNG unit, know as a train, in March.

'We can confirm that a planned shutdown for the inspection of the Frame Nine turbines is scheduled for about that time,' the spokesperson said in an e-mailed statement.

The plant has capacity to produce 7.8 million tonnes of LNG per year, most of which would go to Britain. It was the first of four trains of equal size due to come on line in Qatar this year to double total capacity to 62 million tonnes.

Qatar has divided its LNG projects between two firms, Qatargas and RasGas. Both are majority owned by state oil firm Qatar Petroleum.Qatar is currently starting up Qatargas train 5 and RasGas train 6.-Reuters