Qatar is shrugging off Saudi Arabia's reported plans to block the completion of a $3.5 billion natural gas pipeline that's eight years in the making. Saudi Arabia reportedly said last week that the pipeline - due to bring gas from Qatar to the UAE - crossed its underwater territory and that it would object to it. A senior Qatar energy official dismissed these reports.
The undersea pipeline "cannot be constructed without the agreement of the kingdom,'' according to a July 8 memo faxed by the Saudi government to the National Bank of Abu Dhabi, which is involved in financing the link. The UAE controlled venture in a statement today said the pipeline is almost complete and runs "exclusively'' in Qatar and emirati waters.
"We don't think it is very serious. We have been working for a long time on this, and too much expenditure has been made," the official was quoted as saying by the regional Zawya Dow Jones news service on Tuesday.
The sub-sea pipeline is being laid by Dolphin Energy and is 51 percent owned by Abu Dhabi, along with U.S.-based Occidental Petroleum and France-based Total. It is due to provide 2 billion cubic feet of gas a day from Qatar to the UAE and Oman by 2007.
This isn't the first time Saudi Arabia has intervened in regional energy projects. The kingdom's objection to Qatari exports of natural gas to Kuwait through a pipeline that would have gone through its waters helped derail the project.
Saudi Arabia has criticized Qatar over its al-Jazeera television channel for hosting critics of the Saudi government. The kingdom and the UAE also have a disagreement over border demarcations, which were drawn up in 1974, giving the kingdom a greater share of the 17 billion-barrel Shaybah oil field that straddles the two neighboring countries.
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