Qatar goes from strength to strength

Doha is reaping financial and diplomatic rewards from a tight and tense gas market, while doubling down on investment

State-owned QatarEnergy has had an extraordinarily fruitful five months since its rebranding, capped off by the Graff-1 discovery off the Namibian coast. A gas supply crunch in Europe, compounded by fears of an interruption to Russian supplies, has granted Qatari officials newfound status in Western corridors of power, courted by Washington and Brussels to plug actual and potential supply gaps. Meanwhile, soaring revenues accruing from high prices are enabling accelerated investment across the firm’s portfolio beyond the core LNG business. The Namibia find—which is of unspecified volumes of light oil in the Orange basin—came only ten months after QatarEnergy farmed into the Shell-operated ul