Global Geo-political Series: Does natural gas have any role in Qatar crisis?

It has been almost a month, since Qatar was diplomatically, militarily blockaded by prominent Gulf countries like Saudi Arabia, United Arab Emirates, Bahrain, and Egypt. These countries presented Qatar via Kuwait a 13-point demands list, which demanded Qatar’s compliance to the demands by last Sunday. As Qatar didn’t give in to those demands, instead of coming to the talks as suggested by Qatar, the deadline was extended by two days while Saudi Arabia decided to abstain from this week’s G20 meeting.

While the diplomatic crisis was blamed upon Qatar’s support and funding for extremist ideologies, terrorist groups, as well as meddling in other countries’ affairs, alternate theory/views suggest that it is all about natural gas. While it is difficult to establish real motives in International politics, in this article we evaluate Qatar’s link to natural gas. Here are some key points to note,

• As natural gas proves itself to be a more efficient fuel with less environmental impact, the demand for natural gas is likely to soar over the coming decades and it would soon overtake oil as the primary source of energy consumed across the globe.
• While Saudi Arabia is the dominant player of oil in the Middle East, its position is dwarfed by natural gas reserves of Qatar and Iran. Qatar and Iran together hold about 31 percent of the proven global reserves of natural gas. Qatar’s biggest gas field is jointly operated with Iran. Compared to that, Saudi Arabia has about 4.5 percent of the global proven reserves. Not only Saudi Arabia, but the entire Middle East is in a disadvantageous position with just 11 percent of the global natural gas reserves.
• While Iran faces sanctions, its gas can get re-exported via Qatar, providing it a steady source of income.
• The Qatar-Iran alliance in the field of natural gas has implications not just for the Middle East, but the world as well. Iran is an ally of Russia. Russia is an ally of China. This group holds about 51 percent of the global natural gas reserves.
• Qatar is the second biggest exporter of natural gas in the world, only second to Russian Federation.   

Looking at these numbers, it seems that it is highly possible that natural gas is playing a role here, but like we said it is difficult to assert with certainty.