Qatar, a fat thumb of a country that juts from Saudi Arabia into the Persian Gulf, covers barely 7,000 sq miles and boasts an expatriate population larger than its native one.
Yet, as so often happens, nature has seen fit to leave massive mineral deposits in a region that cannot fully use them: Qatar possesses the world's largest single nonassociated gas deposit.
Hydrocarbon wealth elsewhere has been a curse for a people as often as it has been a blessing. Witness especially Nigeria and Venezuela. (See T. L. Karl, The Paradox of Plenty: Oil Booms and Petro-States. Berkeley, Calif., University of California Press, 1997.)
But maybe, just maybe, Qatar will be different.
Qatar just might serve as a tutorial in how a country strikes a balance between managing its hydrocarbon resources for its future and spending its hydrocarbon wealth for its people.
Early signs are promising; African and Latin American countries with oil and gas wealth—and starving people and crumbling infrastructures—should pay attention.
The past few months have brought a blizzard of announcements of new projects in Qatar, projects that develop its huge natural gas resources and projects that benefit its people.
Growth
You would have to have just crawled from beneath a rock after a 25-year sleep not to know of Qatar's exploding role in the world's resurgent LNG industry.
Based on the discovery of the massive North field—reserves of more than 900 tcf and counting—Qatar in 1997 had production capacity of barely 4.4 million tonnes/year (tpy) of LNG and exported only 2.2 million tpy. By 2011, LNG production capacity of the country's two LNG companies is likely to hit more than 62 million tpy, its exports 60 million tpy, from 12 trains at Ras Laffan Industrial City north of Doha.
This level could vault this small country into the position of world's No. 1 LNG exporter.
But 2004 represents a major escalation in the country's exploitation of its resource.
Earlier this summer, Qatar and ExxonMobil Corp. announced plans to build the "largest single, fully integrated" GTL project at Ras Laffan. Upon start-up in 2011, the $7 billion plant will produce 154,000 b/d of liquids for "sulfur-free" (less than 10-15 ppm) diesel and other products.
Such a project on such a scale represents the corner-turning development GTL has needed and will set the stage for more such projects that exploit large but isolated gas resources while meeting expanding worldwide demand for cleaner fuels.
Qataris benefit
But for Qataris, where is the money going? Such a small nation with such massive wealth and grand plans seems to have its priorities in order.
A Persian Gulf investment company in June of this year reported that Qatar plans to spend $9 billion over the next 6 years on such infrastructure projects as roads, sewage systems, buildings, and health and education facilities. Separate from this amount, the country has embarked on a new $5 billion international airport to serve capital city Doha.
The country's economic policy was described as "sound and balanced" and targeting "sustainable economic development," according to OPECNA News Service.
Another beneficiary of the country's huge annual income, pegged at $35 billion since 2000 and nearly double that of the previous 4 years, is the burgeoning education sector, especially centered in Doha's Education City.
This is a growing cluster of educational institutions north and west of Doha that boasts campuses for Virginia Commonwealth University, Texas A&M University, and the Weill Cornell Medical College, among others.
In June, Qatar Foundation an- nounced plans to build an "all-digital" medical care and research center in connection with the medical college. Supported by an $8 billion endowment, a 350 bed, $900 million hospital will serve as the primary teaching hospital of the medical college.
Skeptical?
More announcements seem likely and reinforce the impression that the country's massive wealth below ground is being carefully and conservatively exploited to benefit those aboveground. The energetic, expansive, and optimistic mood of Doha during the LNG14 conference there in March underscored that impression.
But cynics who've watched oil development in other remote areas benefit only a few while many starved are understandably suspicious.
Qatar is not, after all, a democracy. But even developments in that arena seem promising: A new constitution is barely 2 years old. Although ruled by a monarch, Sheikh Hamad bin Khalifa al-Thani, the country shows signs of moving toward a more consultative government.
So, maybe, just maybe, this time.
