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Brief history of the country

Qatar (the State of Qatar) occupies the Qatar Peninsula on the northeastern coast of the Arabian Peninsula. It has a southern land border with Saudi Arabia and is surrounded by the Persian Gulf.

Settlements are recorded in Qatar from 6500 BC. In 224 AD the Persian Sassanian Empire took control of Beth Qatraye, which included Bahrain. In 628 Arab leaders replaced the Persians and it became a centre for pearl trading.

Administered by the Kingdom of Hormuz from 1320 and by Portugal from 1515, Qatar voluntarily submitted to the rule of the Ottomans in 1550. The Ottomans were then expelled in 1670 by clans, led, after 1766 by the Al Khalifa dynasty. It was annexed by Bahrain in 1783.

In 1825 the House of Thani was founded as a dependency of the Al-Khalifa. After Qatari rebels began to demand independence a settlement was imposed by the UK in 1868 recognising Qatar as separate from Bahrain and the house of Thani as its leader.

However, in 1871 the country again fell to Ottoman rule, then becoming a UK protectorate in 1916 after collapse of the Ottoman Empire. Oil revenue from 1949 led to modernisation and full independence was declared in 1971.

Generally pro-west, it was US Command headquarters in the 2003 Second Gulf War. Qatar has the highest per capita income in the world with an economy dependent on its large gas and oil reserves.

Oil and gas summary

The Qatari peninsula extends northwards into the Persian Gulf most of which consists of a low, barren plain, covered with sand. The highest point is Qurayn Abu al Bawl at 103m in the Jebel Dukhan on the west, a range of limestone outcrops running north-south to the southern border.To the southeast lies the Khor al Adaid (Inland Sea), an area of sand dunes surrounding an inlet of the Gulf.

The Jebel Dukhan area contains Qatar's only onshore oil field. Qatar has produced oil from this field, known as Dukhan, since 1949 with associated gas being first used in 1962. The country has kept onshore output roughly stable ever since.

Offshore oil has been produced since 1964 with output steadily increasing through regular investment in approximately 15 large fields, along with rising NGLs from the North field.

The North field, discovered in 1979, lies to the northwest of the peninsula. It is the largest gas accumulation in the world, part located in Iran, where it is known as South Pars and is being developed separately. It came onstream in 1991 and output has risen as LNG trains have been built by two operators and as a number of pipeline projects have been installed.

The Dolphin project, that sends piped gas to the UAE, began producing in 2008 and GTL plants came onstream in 2007 and 2011.

The North field still has the potential to grow output even though many LNG trains in 2 plants are already in production. Globalshift believes that the actual production profile of gas and NGLs will be dependent on world markets rather than gas availability.

Government

Qatar is an absolute monarchy with the Emir as head of state and head of government. There is no electoral system and political parties are banned however under a 2003 constitutional referendum it should become a constitutional monarchy with a 45-member (30 elected and 15 appointed by the Emir) Consultative Assembly (Majlis as-Shura).

The current Advisory Council is an appointed body that assists the Emir in formulating policy.

The Ministry of Energy and Industry is responsible for planning and overseeing the oil and gas industry. Established in 1974, Qatar Petroleum (QP) is the NOC responsible for upstream and downstream operations.

Ras Gas and Qatar Gas were established by QP as joint ventures in 1993 and 1994 respectively with foreign companies to exploit LNG. They started production in 1999 and 1997.

Qatar became a member of OPEC in 1961 but opted to leave the group at the beginning of 2019.

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Geology

Qatar is entirely underlain by the Arabian Basin onshore and offshore in the Persian Gulf. This foreland basin is wedge-shaped, dipping beneath the Zagros thrust front in eastern Iran. Rich in hydrocarbons, the Qatar peninsula lies on a regional high in the basin. The structural high contains Qatar’s giant North Gas field. Half this field extends into the Iranian part of the Persian Gulf where it is called the South Pars field.

The Arabian Basin (or Persian Gulf Basin) lies on the northeast of the Arabian Plate between the Eurasian and African Plates. It covers much of the onshore Middle East and the offshore Persian Gulf, Gulf of Oman and Arabian Sea, all of which are marginal seas of the Indian Ocean.

The Arabian Plate has divergent margins along the Gulf of Aden, Red Sea and Sheba ridge. On its east the Owen ridge is an intra-oceanic transform fault. There are convergent margins on the north and northeast in Turkey, along the Zagros Mountains on the east of Iran, and along the Makran fold belt in Pakistan, where the plate is subducting beneath the Eurasian plate. The Dead Sea and associated ridges were created by a transform fault on its northwest margin.

The Plate comprises a number of structural regions including the Zagros fold and thrust belt, the Arabian Trough in the central region of Saudi Arabia and Bahrain, the Gotnia Trough in the northern region covering Iraq and Syria and the Rub-Al-Khali in the southern region in Saudi Arabia and parts of the United Arab Emirates. These were largely established during Palaeozoic continuous continental marine sedimentation on the north east side of Gondwana.

Recognisable structural development of the region began around 800 mm years ago in the Precambrian when a series of islands-arcs and micro-continent terranes were accreted by compression to form the Arabian Plate within Gondwana. This culminated in the Hormuz salt basin around 650 mm years ago.

During the Late Ordovician polar glaciation in Gondwana followed by a rise in sea level in the Early Silurian led to deposition of organic-rich shales, a major source of Palaeozoic hydrocarbons.

The Hercynian Orogeny began in the Late Devonian and the region was in a compressional back-arc-setting. The central Arabian plate was uplifted, tilted eastwards and eroded.

In the late Permian and early Triassic the break-up of Gondwana began with thermal subsidence and extension in the Arabian plate followed by rifting of the Zagros region that opened the Neo-Tethys Sea. This rifting continued until compression during the early Alpine orogeny in the Late Cretaceous which resulted in uplift and erosion and closure of Neo-Tethys Sea.

The Late Alpine Orogeny began in the early Tertiary as the Arabian and Eurasian plates collided to form the Zagros Fold Belt and Mesopotamian Foredeep which was the start of the formation of the foreland Arabian Basin. Meanwhile the Red Sea and Gulf of Aden began to open around 25 mm years ago, separating the African and the Arabian plates.

The Arabian basin accumulated a thick sequence of carbonate reservoirs through the Palaeozoic and Mesozoic during long periods of stable subsidence. Most of the oil in the region originates from Jurassic organic-rich carbonates although source rocks are also present in Paleozoic and Cretaceous sediments. Structures were formed during the Carboniferous (by the Hercynian Orogeny), the Early Triassic (as a result of Zagros rifting), the Early (Oman) Alpine Orogeny and the Late Alpine Orogeny.

Large volumes of gas found in Permo-Triassic sediments also originated from the organic-rich deeply buried shales of early Silurian age.

QATAR: ARABIAN BASIN

Globalshift.co.uk (source: USGS)