LYCOS RETRIEVER 
Qatar: Qatar Petroleum
built 287 days ago
Qatar's economy was in a downturn from 1982 to 1989. OPEC (Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries) quotas on crude oil production, the lower price for oil, and the generally unpromising outlook on international markets reduced oil earnings. In turn, the Qatari government's spending plans had to be cut to match lower income. The resulting recessionary local business climate caused many firms to lay off expatriate staff. With the economy recovering in the 1990s, expatriate populations, particularly from Egypt and South Asia, have grown again.
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Qatar imports the majority of its food, although livestock and fruits and vegetables are raised and there is fishing. Oil and natural gas, the mainstays of the economy, account for roughly 70% of the country's export earnings. Although total oil reserves are somewhat modest in comparison to other Persian Gulf countries, Qatar is one of the largest natural-gas producers in the world. The vast North Field gas reserve, an underwater field northeast of the Qatar peninsula, began production in the 1990s. Natural gas, crude oil, refined petroleum, and petrochemicals are produced, and steel, cement, and fertilizers are some of Qatar's developing diversified industries. The country has ... become a regional banking center.
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Ruled by the al-Thani family since the mid-1800s, Qatar transformed itself from a poor British protectorate noted mainly for pearling into an independent state with significant oil and natural gas revenues. During the late 1980s and early 1990s, the Qatari economy was crippled by a continuous siphoning off of petroleum revenues by the amir, who had ruled the country since 1972. His son, the current Amir HAMAD bin Khalifa al-Thani, overthrew him in a bloodless coup in 1995. In 2001, Qatar resolved its longstanding border disputes with both Bahrain and Saudi Arabia. Oil and natural gas revenues enable Qatar to have one of the highest per capita incomes in the world.
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Qatargas 3 is owned by project sponsors Qatar Petroleum, the state oil and gas company of Qatar, and ConocoPhillips Company. U.S. exporters participating in the project include Air Products and Chemicals, Allentown, Pennsylvania; General Electric Co. Inc., Fairfield, Connecticut; and ConocoPhillips Company, Houston, Tex.
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Like the other Persian Gulf Arab states, Qatar's pearling industry, virtually its sole source of income before oil, was devastated in the 1930s due to the influx into the world market of cultured pearls produced in Japan. In 1935 a concession was granted to a subsidiary of the Anglo-Iranian Oil Company (later British Petroleum). The modest concession payments enabled Abdullah ibn Qasim to solidify his position and that of the Al Thani clan, a process completed when the ruling family began to earn oil export income after 1949. Political independence was thrust upon Qatar in 1968, when the United Kingdom decided to end its protective relationships with the lower Gulf states by the end of 1971. It declared its independence on 3 September 1971 after the failure of efforts to join Bahrain and the seven Trucial Emirates in a federation.
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The name "Qatar" may derive from the same Arabic root as qatura which means "to exude." The word Qatura traces to the Arabic qatran meaning "tar" or "resin", which relates to the country's rich resources in petroleum and natural gas. [2]
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