WITH THE MAN WHO PUT QATAR ON THE MAP OF TOP ENERGY SUPPLIERS IN THE WORLD, HIS EXCELLENCY ABDULLAH BIN HAMAD AL ATTIYAH, THE FORMER OIL MINISTER. BY SINDHU NAIR PHOTOGRAPHS BY ROBERT ALTAMIRANO
he energy that emanates
from His Excellency Abdullah bin Hamad Al Attiyah, the former Oil Minister, is infectious. After meeting him you want to abolish any law that makes retirement at 60 mandatory. If this man can passionately engage you in a monologue about the oil and gas worlds intricacies for around two hours, I believe, his contribution to the country would still be enlightening. HE Al Attiyah welcomed us to the inner sanctum of his present office at the Abdullah Bin Hamad Al Attiyah Foundation for Energy & Sustainable Development, answered my query about his health, Today I am alive and that is very good, not having lost any of the spontaneity that he was known to possess while he was the oil and gas minister. HE Al Attiyah is currently the Chairman
of Abdullah Bin Hamad Al Attiyah
Foundation for Energy & Sustainable Development. Formerly, the President of the Qatar Administrative Control and Transparency Authority as (ACTA) well as the President of COP18/CMP8 Doha and the Chairman of the Higher Organizing Committee, Al-Attiyah has more than 30 years experience in the energy industry and was appointed Minister of Energy and Industry and Chairman and Managing Director of Qatar Petroleum before being entrusted with the additional responsibility of Second Deputy Prime Minister in 2003. All the various roles and responsibilities he handled, came with challenges of their own. We wanted COP18 to be a success for Qatar, to show to the world that the country could organise an event on this large scale, he says. But it was over relatively quickly. OPEC was about diplomacy at each meeting, he says. After that, as President
of the ACTA I dealt with a long-term goal of
changing regulations and mindsets. As the oil minister, he says. My job was about getting our oil and gas industry on the right track to ensure long-term financial goals, and that, he reflects, was the most challenging of all his roles. He goes back in time and recounts the scenario when he was handed the mandate of the oil ministry in September 1992. The situation of the oil market was very bad at that time. Qatar was only producing 360,000 barrels per day. LNG production was zero. Oil price was at its lowest. This was my challenge, recollects HE Al Attiyah. To add to his worries, the government was going through a tough time with the collapse of oil prices. The government did not have money to finance projects. That was the time we set about to fulfill our dream of utilising our huge asset of gas reservoirs that had never been touched before. It was not as simple as it sounds. We 17 > QATAR TODAY > DECEMBER 2016
energy > listening post
had no investment, we had no customers. It was highly risky, oil prices were very low which meant that LNG prices were also low. Very few countries were using LNG as an energy product, he says. That was the biggest challenge, he says. Of how to utilise our resources and to monetise them. The first step that he and the government took thereafter was to find the elusive customer. That was also not easy in a very tight market. We were also far away from the traditional LNG markets like India, China, Indonesia and Malaysia. HE Al Attiyah says, We started with Japan as it was the biggest consumer of LNG. The good thing was that it was an open market and we could talk to the buyers directly without government intervention. But it was extremely difficult to convince them. They disagreed initially on factors of security of supply (as the first and second Gulf Wars were just over) and the cost involved in transportation due to the distance and so on. Al Attiyah remembers that many visits and persistent convincing later, Japan finally agreed to the LNG deal. The next step was to finance such a huge LNG train. We found the support of the Japan Bank for International Cooperation (JBIC) to finance the energy-related projects in the region and raise loans to support the projects. The first customer was the most difficult after which the rest followed comparatively easily. Most countries were concerned with the security of supplies and when they found that Japan had already taken a step forward, they were willing to take the same step. Korea, Taiwan and then India came in, he says. India was also an important client of LNG for Qatar and it was also a landmark deal. It was a time of change in India. The country was moving from a textile based industry on to a more energy intensive industry. Coal was being relied on for most of their energy needs. This was the cause of high levels of pollution in the country. Sixty five percent of the energy needs of the Indian subcontinent were being met by coal. And to add to it, India had never ever imported LNG from another country and hence it was a big step to convince them. India did not import any natural gas until 2004, when it began to import LNG. Because India has not been able to produce an adequate supply of domestic natural gas and was unable to create sufficient natural
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We had no investment, we had no customers. It was highly risky, oil prices were very low which meant that LNG prices were also low. Very few countries were using LNG as an energy product.
gas pipeline infrastructure on a national
level, it increasingly relied on imported LNG to meet domestic demand. India ranked as the fourth-largest LNG importer following Japan, South Korea and China in 2013, and it accounted for nearly 6% of the global market, according to data from IHS Energy. In 2012, LNG imports, mostly from longterm contracts with Qatar, accounted for about 29% of Indias 2.1 trillion cubic feet (tcf ) of consumption. Here Al Attiyah reveals one marketing strategy that worked in getting the Indians
to sign on the dotted line of the gas deal
contracts. Persistence and constant follow-up will finally convince any stubborn buyer, he says, a lesson that would well be adopted by marketing professionals world over. Finally in 2003, India came onto our list as one of our biggest consumers. Then the list grew longer: China, UK, Italy, Poland, France, Thailand, Philippines and Pakistan, which recently signed a long-term deal. We are now operating the biggest LNG company and also the biggest gas transportation company in the world, he says. The biggest achievement for HE Al Attiyah was changing the countrys economy from that of a small oil-producing country to being hailed as the largest LNG producers in the world. And it did not end there. The gas-rich country went a step further to monetise the huge gas reserves of the country to convert them back to liquid through the GTL project, expanding on the use of fuels. But other than making use of the oil and gas, the country put to use every single by-product that came out of its refinery.We decided to have a balance of resources; not just to rely entirely on our oil and gas production, but also to be a big player in the petrochemical industry. Today Qatar exports to almost 91 countries; it is a proud moment for us. Qatar is now one of the biggest exporters of helium, another byproduct of oil; we are one of the major producers of fertilizers, from petrochemicals. We industralised the country, not just by exporting one product but by creating a basket of products that can
be exported and monetised.
The GTL that we use is the cleanest diesel one can ever use, with zero emissions, says Al Attiyah touching on the fact that the country might be producing more gas than any other country but it was also one of the cleanest forms of energy. Our power sector is 100% running on gas. We are one of the rare countries in which the whole power industry is gas-based. We have adopted very strict environmental rules. Our gasoline is also very clean, we add MTBE for our 95 grade gasoline a very high quality gasoline in the Euro standard, with very low emissions. Being in charge of the COP 18 organising committee when it was held in Doha, Al Attiyah says that he knows what the other countries are up against and Qatar is far ahead of other oil and gas producing countries. Our fertilizer production, our aluminium and steel production are all going up and we are proud of all these acheivements. On how he made changes in the oil production, he says, Oil was a developed market so the efforts on monetising it were really concerned with getting international expertise in to raise and maintain production levels. This we did successfully particularly in the development of the Al Shaheen field which has become Qatars largest. What will be the new energy mix? What
will the new ratio of oil, gas or renewables
be in the oil and gas mix available in the world? There are several factors here. Oil reserves are high and will last for many years but so are gas reserves. Gas is a clean fuel and so is viewed as a transition generation fuel as it is cleaner than coal. However coal is cheap at the moment so many countries still use coal fired generation. Renewables
Finally in 2003, India
came onto our list as one of our biggest consumers. Then the list grew longer: China, UK, Italy, Poland, France, Thailand, Philippines and Pakistan, which recently signed a long-term deal.
will play an increasing role in most OECD
countries as CO2 emissions standards are tightened. Most countries will diversify their energy supply according to their own national priorities, says HE Al Attiyah. But he still feels that among renewables, solar energy is the best option available for mankind and he is positive that Qatar will explore this option and make this work to add to the large basket of resources that the country can bank on. What about the future? In these times of energy price instability, he still views all the developments from a very macro perspective, saying, in the energy world, there is always a cycle. It will always take you up or down. The economy is always cyclical in nature. There are some good days for buyer and there are some good days for seller and this is normal, he says with the wisdom of someone who has seen these changes more than a couple of times. We should not panic. This is not the first time that this has happened in the world. There is never stability in the economy of the world. China and India have reached their peak of development. These countries are export-oriented economies. The demand for their export goods has peaked and the countries they are exporting to are going through recession. This and the surplus of oil in the market due to shale gas discovery have made this change in the oil price, he says. So when will the oil price come to the old high that we saw some five years back? It will take some time, says Al Attiyah. When the oil price was $110, I have always maintained that it was not a healthy price. As a producer, you need a happy consumer, a healthy consumer, but with high prices for oil, your consumer will be affected and it is not an ideal situation. Any price over $80 is not a healthy price for the producer as well as the consumer. We need a price that is sustainable. We always say that energy cannot die, and it will come back to its natural brilliance. But in this period, you should manage the crisis and not be part of it. Change your pocket policy; keep some money for your bad days. Read about the past, you will understand the present and act for the future, he says, as a word of caution to the new generation. A post oil (and gas) era is a long time away in the future. For Qatar we should look to doing things more efficiently and also support the move towards a knowledge economy as set out in Qatar Vision 2030. 19 > QATAR TODAY > DECEMBER 2016