Qatar's LNG: Impact of the Changing East‐Asian Market: Impact of the changing east-asian market

Qatar is a unique example of a small-state actor that has achieved rapid economic development domestically and nurtured a foreign policy with an international reach. The key driver behind its success is the country's extraordinary reserves of natural gas. Qatar's North Field, for instance, shared jointly with Iran, is the largest non-associated natural-gas field in the world, and the strategic decision to exploit it during the 1980s has enabled Qatar to emerge as the leading exporter of Liquefied Natural Gas (LNG). The profits have provided the capacity for the nation's economic growth and huge investment in its gas industry, including a global fleet of LNG tankers that can supply gas to every corner of the world. While Qatar has experienced a golden age of expansion in global consumption of natural gas, transformative changes are occurring in the market. In the absence of significant competition, market dynamics have prompted global investment in natural-gas exploitation — accelerated by unforeseen advances in the exploitation of shale through fracking for both oil and gas, in addition to coal-seam methane. The challenge from this changing environment will, I argue, result in a necessary recalibration of Qatar's energy policy and supply linkages. The changing market dynamics underpin and largely determine Qatar's wider trading, foreign-policy and investment relationships through what can be understood as an example of complex interdependence.