Qatar on the cusp
A lesser Dubai: That's the first impression a visitor gets touring downtown Doha, the capital of the Gulf emirate of Qatar. Dubai (population 1.4 million) has its famous ultramodern skyline and man-made islands, its wild young rich kids, and—since the real estate boom went bust—plenty of empty office space. Qatar (population 1.5 million) has semi-vacant glass towers and its own artificial island, a handsome Islamic museum designed by I.M. Pei, and young men racing through the streets in Ferraris and Porsches.
But the differences between the two are vast. Dubai became an entrepreneurial hot spot and global real estate play precisely because it lacked the natural resources that are now making Qatar one of the region's most important places. After more than a decade of careful, costly development, the Qataris are starting to reap the benefit of having in their territorial waters the world's largest natural gas deposit, the North Field— 900 trillion cubic feet of reserves, two-thirds the size (in oil barrel equivalents) of Saudi Arabia's reserves of crude.
Natural gas these days is extremely cheap: Crude sells at a 300% per-Btu premium to gas, almost double the average spread of the past five years. Qatar's gas is especially hard to monetize because it lies far from Europe and Asia. So the Qataris are now completing the last two of 14 plants, several of which are larger than any elsewhere in the world, that cool natural gas into a liquid that can be transported by ship to distant markets. And Royal Dutch Shell (RDS) is aiming for an even more splendid alchemy with a $19 billion project that turns gas into liquid oil products such as jet fuel. These oil spin-offs fetch as much as $90 a barrel and form a hedge against low gas prices.
read more here: http://www.businessweek.com/magazine/content/10_12/b4171052610071.htm
What happens when all the towers completed as it is even now big parking problem.
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attention:
A lesser Dubai, this is a comment on Doha by a VISITOR. And most of you talked about the future of this country, not the same thing at all. So, why do you compare?
Doha cannot be compared to Dubai..coz..Dubai's like..a complete modern urban place, and Doha can be called a wana-be Dubai but ultimately failing in every step to be another Dubai.
yea true tht Doha has gas n blah blah blah, but..it's not at all a happening place, it's all dead here..can see sme cars chasin on the roads..malls closing down by 10 pm (man dats hillarious!)..n " hey..what shows goin on in doha? any bands out here performing?"...aaah...funny named djs..dats it. Ultimately, this is a boring place. Dubai's an open place, whereas Doha..it's more of a conservative type, which is a major factor tht hampers to it's growth and modernization. Be it 50 or another 100 years, Doha's neva gona be another Dubai.
peace
@ mathboy,my view on this issue is pessimistic & yours is optimistic...is that not the whole purpose of a forum?...so people with different views can debate an issue WITHOUT getting personal & nasty?...
As Nic correctly pointed out,the photograph in the post is very slick but what of the fact that the occupancy of MOST of those towers in the picture are significantly less than even 50%...i call it reality,you call it pessimism,i'm entitled to my view like you are to yours mate...please be mature about it & don't make it personal...
Too bad that most of the buildings seen in the picture above were just finished in the outside. If you go inside you'll see the unfinished structure.
The reason is that most of these buildings have no purpose, they were just built because they had the money but no purpose.
Now most of them stand only to decorate the skyline of Doha and to serve as an empty trophy for the owner's money!
If Qatar isn’t careful, the empty buildings will have a negative impact on the country, similar to what is happening in Dubai!
Qatar is building more than its native population can absorb and this will have a tremendous impact on their identity survival – a fact not addressed or publicly considered by Qatari’s policy makers!
Well put mathboy. Respect.
J.J
gadarene, Very optimistic views. Gas will run out eventually.. ok..
One should stop living because he will die eventually.. Why to struggle in life, why take so much pain, one day you will die.
Most people are just here for the money. i suppose you could go to Dubai for more reasons than just money. But when you leave here do you really look back? It's like Doha doesn't exist.
Dubai Population as of 2008 = 2,262,000
Source: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dubai
Agree with cockroach......
"It is better to be hated for what you are than being loved for what you are not."
There is no comparision between Dubai & Doha. It will take another few decades for Doha to reach there.
It is really funny when people compare Doha and Dubai :)
http://yadiin.blogspot.com/
Coming from Europe one will feel terribly homesick when living in Qatar -but not in the Emirates .
Still in Qatar the prospects are better in constructing industry or in the sport field .
One can make money here - but will feel here always as a stranger . The segregation in the society is very big .
Lame lame lame... come on and stop bashing on Dubai - What I hate most since I came to Doha is that people always try to compare it with Dubai and Now with the Global recession and real estate sector in DUbai going down they think Doha have an edge.
Well yes, they have more money and DOha is a good place but it is 50 years behind Dubai in terms of they type of people living in.
I have been living 5 years in Doha and things going well as I have a good life here; but truth to be told, Doha is way wayyyy wayyyyyyyy behind Dubai.
I reckon there is enough Gas reserves in the north shore for around 200 odd years.
The Powers that be in Qatar are doing a great job and investing the benefits reaped now in long term fundamentally sound investments locally and abroad.
By the time the resources run out, Qatar would have a finger in every pie and would not be necessarily over reliant on natural resources.
J.J
i thought Dubai's population is large and more than 1.4 million. Is the figures right? Just asking.
That's why they're building up their intangible knowledge for the future. Qatarization etc. Right way forward.
A solid / conservative foundation will stand the test of time, no matter what harsh winds of challenges it faces.
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Beauty lies in the eyes of the beerholder.
& what happens when the gas runs out?...because it will,not anytime in the near future but make no mistake about it,eventually it will run out...then what happens?...the bubble will burst just like Dubai's did...