Natural gas Qatar’s biggest weapon in dispute
Cutting off supplies has potential for escalation
DUBAI, United Arab Emirates — Natural gas built the high-rises of Qatar’s capital, put the Al-jazeera satellite news network on the air and a fleet of passengers jets for its state carrier in the sky. Now, it might be what protects Qatar as it is in the center of the worst diplomatic crisis to strike the Gulf in decades.
As the world’s biggest exporter of liquid natural gas, Qatar’s supplies keep homes warm in the British winter, fuel Asian markets and even power the electrical grid of the United Arab Emirates, one of the main countries that has cut ties to the energy-rich nation.
Qatar wields a potential economic weapon if the crisis escalates, and countries around the world that depend on its supply might find themselves needing to side with the tiny nation that is home to a major U.S. military installation.
“They really began an effort to escape the Saudi shadow and to carve out an autonomous regional and foreign policy that would be distinct,” Ulrichsen said. “It took on much more of an edge in 2011 when they really backed different sides in the Arab Spring. Qatar obviously made a bet that Islamists and the Muslim Brotherhood would be the group to back, and clearly that over time failed to pay off.”
That support sits at the heart of Bahrain, Egypt, Saudi Arabia and the UAE severing diplomatic ties June 5 and cutting off Qatar from its land, sea and air routes. So far, Qatar has made a point of not retaliating against those nations.
Qatar could retaliate by shutting down the undersea Dolphin Energy pipeline, which sends about 2 billion cubic feet of natural gas a day into the UAE, about a third of its daily need. About 200 million cubic feet of that goes onto Oman.
Without that natural gas, electricity plants in Dubai and the UAE capital of Abu Dhabi wouldn’t be able to power air conditioners to beat the brutal heat of summer now descending on the desert sheikhdoms, nor run its vital desalination plants producing water.
“If Qatar was to do anything like that, in Dubai the lights would probably go off,” said Christopher Davidson, a professor of Middle East politics at Durham University in Britain. “If this were to happen, it would be such an escalation from Qatar’s side, the UAE and Saudi would up the ante even more. … If they were to do that, I think it would be no holds barred.”