Russia, Qatar compete in natural gas market

Russia has few simple relationships in the Middle East — or in other regions — but its relations with Qatar are especially complex.

The tension between Moscow and Doha over Syria is perhaps the most visible aspect of their relationship. Russia remains committed to Syrian President Bashar al-Assad, while Qatar is among the most assertive advocates of his ouster. This conflict reflects underlying differences in their attitudes toward Sunni Islamist ideologies — first concretely manifested during Russia’s wars in Chechnya, when Chechen separatists sought and found financial support in Qatar. As senior Russian officials routinely cited these conflicts and the terrorism they produced as their country’s top national security threat, this could have become a defining issue in their relations. Russian President Vladimir Putin’s eventual pacification of Chechnya, which he subcontracted to the brutal and corrupt Chechen President Ramzan Kadyrov, may have prevented this by sharply reducing the day-to-day violence.

Nevertheless, the two are rivals in important respects, as curious as this may seem given that Russia’s land area is over 1,400 times larger than Qatar’s and its population is nearly 70 times larger. The reason for this is of course natural gas, as Russia and Qatar are among the world’s leading producers and exporters. Accordingly, they cooperate in some respects, particularly in defending their shared interests, while competing in others. But unlike issues of national security and terrorism, the gas trade is just business. And so far, both Moscow and Doha have been prepared to take the view that business is business.

Russia’s cooperation with Qatar is increasingly visible in the Gas Exporting Countries Forum (GECF), an emerging international organization with the rather broad goal of “supporting the sovereign rights of member countries over their natural gas resources.” Moscow has been seeking to create a “gas OPEC” for some time, hoping to further enhance its energy leverage with an OPEC-like cartel that Russia could lead by virtue of its position as the world’s largest holder of natural gas reserves and, until recently, the world’s largest producer. The GECF finally took shape in 2008, after seven years of ministerial meetings, and was soon headquartered in Doha (Qatar has the third-largest gas reserves and the second-highest exports within the group, by a very wide margin) with a Russian secretary-general to lead its administrative apparatus. (The current secretary-general is Iranian.)