Qatar’s efforts to keep on good terms with potential customers on both sides of the geopolitical divide will eventually look more commercially prudent than Saudi huffiness
TO SAUDI ARABIA, Qatar is little more than a sore thumb sticking out into the Persian Gulf. For decades, the kingdom has looked down on its neighbour as an irritating pipsqueak, with which it has little in common except the desert. Saudi Arabia has traditionally cut more of a dash in global affairs; the vast fields of natural gas that Qatar controls have never provided it the same clout as its rival’s oceans of oil.
This stands in contrast to a broad decline in oil investment from the industry as a whole, partly because of pressure to avert climate change. Ironically, the world’s most carbon-emitting company, if you count the pollution from burning its oil, appears to be the giant doing the best out of the energy transition.
If anything, Saudi allegiances now lean more East than West. A few weeks ago Aramco finalised a long-mooted investment in a refining complex in northern China. It will supply most of the 300,000 b/d of crude the complex needs. The kingdom’s rulers are in talks with China to price some of the crude supplies in yuan, thehas reported.
Like Aramco, QatarEnergy’s customers are also mostly Asian. But the emirate, one of the world’s biggest exporters of liquefied natural gas , has a more pragmatic approach to the outside world. It wants strong commercial relations with China—partly to ensure its LNG exports to the Asian giant are not displaced by Russian gas. But that does not prevent it from maintaining strong ties with America. It is loth to put geopolitics ahead of QatarEnergy’s economic interests.
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