Liquefied natural gas (LNG) became the key global emergency energy source from the moment that Russia invaded Ukraine on 24 February 2022. Unlike pipelined energy that requires time-consuming infrastructure build-out and contract negotiations before it can be moved anywhere, LNG can be bought in the spot market when required and move swiftly to wherever it is needed. As increasing sanctions have hit Russia’s previously enormous global oil and gas exports, LNG’s crucial importance to the world’s energy balance has, if anything, increased. Against this backdrop, the centrality of the small Middle Eastern emirate of Qatar in the global energy market has dramatically expanded and is set to do so further. Its position as one of the world’s top LNG exporters will be bolstered as from the middle of next year by the first LNG exports from Phase 1 of the giant North Field East (NFE) expansion project. This is part of a broader output expansion programme that will see the emirate’s LNG production jump from the current 77 million metric tonnes per year (mtpy) to 110 million mtpy by end-2026, to 126 million mtpy by end-2027 and to 142 million mtpy by end-2030. By that time it is forecast that Qatar will account for at least 40% of all new LNG supplies across the globe. The geopolitical importance is not lost on any of the world’s major powers.

Related: Energy Transition Stalls as Oil Super-Cycle Risks Return

Qatar’s geographical positioning between the two great Middle Eastern powers (Saudi Arabia and Iran) and their principal superpower sponsors (respectively, the U.S., China, and Russia) has long required it to play a delicate diplomatic balancing act between the competing sides. However, from around a year before Russia’s 2022 invasion of Ukraine, the emirate appeared to be veering more towards the China-Russia sphere of influence, given the flurry of new long-term LNG contracts signed with Beijing’s firms during that period. This began in March 2021, with the signing of a 10-year purchase and sales agreement by the China Petroleum & Chemical Corp (Sinopec) and Qatar Petroleum (QP) for 2 million mtpy of LNG. December 2021 saw another major long-term contract for Qatar to supply China with LNG, on that occasion, a deal between QatarEnergy and Guangdong Energy Group Natural Gas Co for 1 million mtpy of LNG, starting in 2024 and ending in 2034, although it could be extended. Several other major deals followed. China and Russia had always thought that Qatar might be predisposed towards joining their bloc, given that the emirate shared its principal gas reservoir asset (North Field, or ‘North Dome’) with neighbouring Iran (South Pars), a key ally of both major powers. This 9,700 square kilometre reservoir was, and remains, by far the biggest gas resource in the world, holding an estimated 51 trillion cubic metres (tcm) of non-associated natural gas and at least 50 billion barrels of natural gas condensates. Following the U.S.’s unilateral withdrawal from the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA, or ‘nuclear deal’) with Iran in May 2018, senior figures from Iran’s Petroleum Ministry and Qatar’s Energy Ministry began a series of meetings to agree a new North Dome-South Pars joint development plan. This made sense, as both Qatar and Iran were founding members of the Gas Exporting Countries Forum (GECF), together with Russia, the key customer of which remained China. Information received around the time by OilPrice.com from impeccable security sources indicated that China had been broadly told by Russia of its plans for a ‘large-scale special operation’ in Ukraine months before it happened, not just prior to the 4 February 2022 start of the Beijing Winter Olympics, as many reports have it, as analysed in full in my latest book on the new global oil market order. The implication for Washington at that stage was that Qatar might have been complicit in enabling Beijing to weather the storm of energy supply shortfalls and rocketing prices that followed the 2022 invasion.

That said, Qatar quickly found itself on the wrong end of growing pressure from the U.S., U.K., and France to take a step back from China and to start signing major long-term deals with European countries instead, most notably the European Union’s (E.U.) de facto economic leader ,Germany. Berlin’s intransigence in reducing its imports of cheap Russian gas and oil following Moscow’s forced annexation of Ukraine’s Crimea region in 2014 was widely seen in Washington, London, and Paris as the key reason why President Vladimir Putin thought he could launch the full invasion of Ukraine in 2022 with little or no meaningful consequences for Russia again. Given mounting pressure from these countries on Doha, the end of March 2022 saw the first in a series of strategically crucial meetings for Washington and its allies with senior representatives from Qatar aimed at securing vital LNG supplies urgently for the West. Following one such meeting that month — between Qatar’s Emir, Sheikh Tamim bin Hamad Al Thani, German economy minister, Robert Habeck, and a representative presence by the U.S. – then-U.S. President Joe Biden stated his view of Qatar as a “major non-NATO ally”, as also detailed in my latest book. May 2022 saw Qatar sign a declaration of intent on energy cooperation with Germany aimed at becoming its key supplier of LNG. These plans would run in parallel with, but were likely to be finished significantly sooner than, the plans for Qatar to also make available to Germany sizeable supplies of LNG from the Golden Pass terminal on the Gulf Coast of Texas. QatarEnergy holds a 70% stake in the project, with the U.S.’s ExxonMobil holding the remainder. Following on from these developments, December 2022 saw two sales and purchase agreements signed between QatarEnergy and the U.S.’s ConocoPhillips to export LNG to Germany for at least 15 years from 2026.

So far, Qatar appears to have successfully maintained its delicate balancing act between East and West, albeit perhaps with a slightly greater tilt to the latter in the past two years or so.  This has accompanied an even greater role for it as a key ally of Washington’s in highly sensitive negotiations in the Middle East, most notably recently in matters connected to the Israel-Iran conflict. That said, nothing can be taken for granted, as the E.U. found out recently when Qatar threatened to halt LNG supplies to it on the basis of the unworkability to Doha of ‘Corporate Sustainability Due Diligence Directive’, as analysed in full by OilPrice.com recently. Nonetheless, according to a very senior source in the E.U.’s security apparatus, spoken to exclusively by OilPrice.com recently, the E.U.is working on ways to circumvent the application of this directive in certain circumstances, such that it will not be a practical problem for Qatar. Nor will Washington allow this to derail its monumental efforts to finally wean Germany – and the broader E.U. – off Russian gas and oil supplies, the source added. “This sanction strategy against Russia is vital to degrading its financial ability to keep fighting in Ukraine and then to move further west,” he said, “and depriving China of free access to as much of Qatar’s LNG as it wants is also key to making its plans to invade Taiwan more difficult over the long term,” he underlined. As it currently stands, investment in Qatar’s overall North Field expansion project total around US$83 billion, with much of the foreign input to that having come from Western firms including the U.S.’s ExxonMobil and ConocoPhillips, the U.K.’s Shell, France’s TotalEnergies, and Italy’s Eni.

By Simon Watkins for Oilprice.com

More Top Reads From Oilprice.com