The role of South Pars / North Dome gasfield in the Qatar crisis

South Pars / North Dome (Wikipedia)

The South Pars / North Dome Gas-Condensate field is not well known, but it is easily the largest gas field in the world. It is so large it is as big as the other top 20 gas fields combined. It covers a massive 10,000 sq km situated 3000m below the middle of the Persian Gulf. Australia may be close to exporting the largest amount of gas in the world but Qatar remains the biggest producer. Qatar owns over three-fifths of the gas-concentrate field it calls the North Dome (or North Field). The Iranians call it the South Pars and they own 37 per cent of what is 51 trillion cubic metres of natural gas and 50 billion barrels of natural gas condensates.

The Iranians discovered the field in 1990 but took years to start drilling while recovering from the Iraqi war. Qatar, which had little prior involvement in gas, started drilling its side in the early 2000s building an industry up from nothing to become one of the largest gas exporters in the world. Since 2010 Iran has also been developing the field.

By 2005 Qatar was worried the field was haemorrhaging gas too quickly, and called a halt to new development. Initially a five year moratorium it eventually lasted 12 years. They continued drilling at existing North Dome fields and made a lot of money – it accounts for nearly all of Qatar’s gas production and 60 percent of export revenue – but it developed no new projects.

Until 2017, that is. With existing fields starting to draw down, Qatar saw its market share drop after Australia’s east coast export terminal at Gladstone opened in 2014, and Russia and the US aggressively expanded gas production. Qatar’s problem is that any new fields at North Dome are likely to be closer to the Iranian sector so it requires greater co-operation and information. Iran suffers severe domestic gas shortages and made a rapid increase in South Pars production a top priority following the end of international sanctions and a deal with France’s Total last year.

Qatar’s ties with Iran have not pleased giant neighbour Saudi Arabia. Qatar was long regarded as a Saudi vassal state but started moving independently when emir Hamad Al Thani toppled his pro-Saudi father Khalifa Al Thani in 1995. During Hamad’s 18-year rule, Qatar turned away from Saudi oil and focused on gas at North Dome. Natural gas production reached 77 million tonnes, making Qatar the richest country in the world per capita. Because of North Dome’s strategic location, Qatar promoted a regional policy of engagement with Iran, Saudi Arabia’s biggest enemy. It didn’t help that Qatar won the 2022 World Cup rights while news station Al Jazeera was a thorn in the side of most regimes in the region.

Qatar’s balancing act between the regional superpowers has occasionally exasperated the US. Al Udeid Air Base near Doha hosts 11,000 US military personnel – the largest concentration of American forces in the Middle East. But Qatar has occasionally supported Hamas in Lebanon, the Afghan Taliban, and the Egyptian Muslim Brotherhood. The emir’s ties with Obama and Ahmadinejad led State Secretary John Kerry to exclaim in 2009 “Qatar can’t continue to be an American ally on Monday that sends money to Hamas on Tuesday.” But armed with gas resources, Qatar has been able to keep the US onside while managing to weave a path between Iran and Saudi interests. Qatar has also played a back-channel role with Iran in the Syrian war, brokering hostage and prisoner exchanges, and paying millions of dollars to insurgent and militant groups to the growing distress of Saudi Arabia.

The opportunity for the Saudis to strike back came after new US president Donald Trump’s visit to the kingdom. Trump offered an arms deal and publicly praised their stance on Iran and the Muslim Brotherhood. The emboldened Saudis saw his support as the signal for an attack on Qatar. Within days Saudi Arabia, Egypt, UAE, Bahrain and Yemen severed ties claiming Qatar supported Sunni terrorism and Iranian designs on the region. All but Egypt, which has 250,000 workers there, ordered their citizens to leave Qatar.

As usual with Trump, his administration’s response has been muddled. When the Saudis declared the blockade, Trump supported it in tweets calling Qatar a “funder of radical ideology”. His words caused alarm and countervailing moves from the Pentagon and state department. Within days the US signed a $12 billion deal to supply dozens of F-15 jets to Qatar.

Then the Saudis delivered a new list of ultimatums to Qatar including the closure of Al Jazeera, none of which Qatar looks likely to meet. Nor will Turkey agree to pull its forces from Qatar. As long as the gas flows at South Pars / North Dome, Qatar is unlikely to buckle. Iran is increasing production while Qatar Petroleum has signed an agreement with Japanese engineering company Chiyoda to identify modifications required to increase capacity at Qatar’s LNG trains at Ras Laffan by next year. It will continue to provide gas to Europe via the Suez Canal and the Gulf via the Dolphin Pipeline.

Porcupine Gorge Challenge 2017

Queensland is full of gorgeous gorges no one has heard of. There’s Carnarvon Gorge near Roma in the roof of Queensland, an out of the way place I’ve been fortunate enough to get to many times. There’s Cania Gorge near Monto, like Carnarvon another pristine spot about seven hours from Brisbane. And there’s a place I’d never heard of until 2016: Porcupine Gorge. I’d never been until today when I did the Porcupine Gorge Challenge, an 8km run with a 1.2km hill at the end.  It was a birthday present to myself a day before I turn 53. Or I so conned myself into believing. It was actually one of the toughest things I’ve done in my life. On a par with the Pomona King of the Mountain I did in 2001 which was half the distance, 10 degrees cooler and I was 16 years younger. But never mind. It was time to go further back in time and put on Echo and the Bunnymen:  Porcupine I was blissfully ignorant of what was ahead when I rolled into Hughenden on Friday night. Hughenden is the nearest town, about 70km south of Porcupine Gorge, and five hours east of Mount Isa, four hours west of Townsville). I was in Hughenden last year to talk to railway workers losing their former state rail jobs as privatised Aurizon sees them surplus to requirements. It was a tough visit but as we waited to fly back to Isa I saw the Mayor’s car advertising Porcupine Gorge, a local tourist attraction. An amazing place and very beautiful, the mayor told me. I promised her I would definitely look it up some day.The excuse came with the Great Western Games, a festival of 32 sports from June to July 2017 held in six towns across the north of Queensland from “The Isa to The Towers“. Situated between the two is Hughenden and one of its events is the Porcupine Gorge Challenge. Writing an article for the paper, I found out the challenge is not new. It’s been running since 2001 (the same year I did King of the Mountain) and maybe organisers thought badging it part of the Games would get sponsorship money and extra attention. It certainly got my attention and taking the “get involved” words of Games organisers to heart, I signed up that day.After an early night in Hughenden, I left around 7.30am this morning. I headed 70km north along the bitumen part of the Kennedy Development Hwy (a sometimes gravelly inland back way to Cairns).Then in the distance I saw the Gorge. It was silhouetted, dark and ominous while the sun struggled with early clouds. I don’t know what the green light is, either a property sign sparkling in the sunshine or an alien warning me to go no further.  I didn’t listen to the alien and soon arrived at the Gorge. The campsite is near Pyramid Lookout which had a helpful sign explaining the local geology. About 280 million years ago, the creek began eroding the rocks eventually turning it into Australia’s “Grand Canyon”, as a book in my motel claimed.  That was a big call but it wasn’t a bad one. This photo on the phone (I didn’t want to lug my camera around the track) doesn’t do it justice but it was magnificent to look at. The creek disappeared off into the distance to the north and I would be forced to chase it for several bone-jarring kilometres.The view south was even more spectacular. Pyramid Hill was sculpted out of the rock as the creek slowly gouged out the ancient savannah landscape. This was my start point so I had to get down there.But first I had to register. I though my number was appropriate in the last day of my 52nd year. I was wearing the t-shirt I brought not the official one I was getting for entering as they hadn’t arrived when I got there. I made a note to collect mine at the end and set off down the hill.About half way down I got the first glimpse of the Porcupine Creek trickling through the gorge, lined with melaleuca. After a 1.2 km descent, it was a short distance south to the Pyramid.The Pyramid got altogether more impressive the closer you got to it.These rocks tell a 280 million story. If only I could read it.Almost every river system between Isa and Hughenden is empty including the Flinders River at Hughenden. Cyclone Debbie did promise to bring rain but turned south at the last moment keeping Flinders Shire dry. But there was a surprising amount of water at Porcupine Gorge. Maybe they got some recent local rain or the rocks have dammed the water into place.I was one of the first at the start line but slowly they started dribbling in, including the helicopter dropping off State Emergency Services at strategic points along the gorge.Not everyone was here to run. This guy had the right idea. This would have been a much more sensible birthday present to myself.But I was here now with a 100 or so others ready to race, including this mob. I asked where they were from. “Karumba?” I thought they said. No, they laughed, “Columba” they said. That’s Columba Catholic College, a boarding school in Charters Towers, 250km east. I chatted with a guy who looked in his late sixties and who wasn’t racing. “Couldn’t get you to run this year,” I said joking and perhaps a tad patronising.  No, he said, he was injured but he had done it many times and might do again next year. “Oh,” I said. “Any advice to a newcomer?” Yes, he said. Do up your shoelaces tight, you’ll be going through sand and water and it will get slippery.  I said thanks and rushed away to tighten both laces – twice.Then the littlies (12 and under) were given the signal. I was jealous of them. They would just run back to the turnoff and up the hill.The under 16s were next out. They had to run further down the creek but only half the distance as the adults before turning back for the climb. So I was jealous of them too.Then it was the 70 or so adults, mostly unlike me, in their proper shirts. The guy with the starter pistol in the hi vis vest decided he wanted to count us all but that wasn’t working well after two goes at herding cats. He asked someone did they count them last year. “No,” that person replied, “But it’s a good idea.” Everyone laughed. Eventually someone suggested we should all hold up our hands and put them down as he counted us off. It eventually came to 69 of the 72 registered runners. Dissatisfied but unwilling to hold us up any longer he started the gun for the race.I didn’t take too many photos during the race so many of these photos were taken beforehand. But this was the terrain at the beginning. I was sucked into a faster start than I would like, despite the danger of falling over if not careful on these rocks. And those early clouds had gone away, so the sun was getting serious.There was also climbing involved, as well as wriggling between rocks and over dangerous pebbles that could turn an ankle in an instance.Then it got sandy and while that was less dangerous it was tiring to run in and I was feeling the strain less than a quarter of the race in.  With a big hill at the end of it, I realised my hopes of doing this in under an hour were badly misplaced.Last but not least it got wet with a couple of expected and unexpected drops into the drink as we criss-crossed Porcupine Creek several times. At least my laces were tight.The water one and this photo of people walking the other direction were the only two I took during the race. There were markers in the trees that helped you follow the course but I still took a couple of wrong turns. I also wouldn’t believe the guy who told me I had got halfway and was heading up the next gorge before he called me back. Though walking more than running at this stage I was surprised there were many behind me. I was either the slowest runner or the fastest walker. Take your pick.By the time I got back to the climb I had little left in the tank. Any pretense I had of running up the 1.2km were gone. I was walking, or stumbling. I was breathing very fast.  I was stopping frequently, head bent over for a five second break. At one point I overtook tourists who took one look and said “are you alright?” I didn’t have breath to answer and shuffled past them silently. Eventually I got to the sign alerting me to the last 200m and I broke in to a run, which barely lasted 50m. Determined not to look geriatric I managed to find one last burst before the final corner and ran over the line. I bent over double for about 30 seconds before I could finally tell someone I was okay. Hell, I was more than okay. I was ecstatic – I had finished it. A time of around about 1hr 15 mins for the 8km course so plenty of room for improvement. Maybe next year I can get a few more tips from old mate when he races again. I grabbed my shirt at the end and posed triumphantly, my first Porcupine Gorge Challenge successfully negotiated.

Smash the pig
This pork is mine
I’m pining for the pork
Of the porcupine
I’d best be on my best behaviour
Best behave yourself you hear

(Echo and the Bunnymen 1983)

Basically Bowen

After a night in Charters Towers it was off to the coast the following morning, The destination is Bowen three hours away. There’s 100km down the Flinders Hwy, then a shortcut to avoid Townsville via the Woodstock-Giru Rd and south through Ayr. Bowen is a town I’d often travelled through but had never stayed there. Getting there before lunchtime I went down to the seafront and was confronted by this giant mango. Yet this was the “Mini Mango” not the Big Mango which was on the highway just out of town. The Bowen Mango or “Kensington Pride” is the leading commercial mango cultivar in Queensland, thought to have been introduced by traders in Bowen who were shipping horses for military use in India.

Category 4 Cyclone Debbie smashed through the east coast six weeks earlier, the area south of Bowen directly in its firing line. Most debris was cleared away by the time I came though but the evidence was everywhere, including in these trees bent backwards by the force of the winds.

Bowen was the first port established in North Queensland, officially proclaimed in 1861 and named for Queensland’s first Governor, Sir George Ferguson Bowen. The town grew quickly to support the northern pastoral industry as a strategically placed supply centre but was eclipsed by Townsville in the 1870s. Bowen needed a jetty to function effectively as a port.  Passengers and cargo initially had to be transferred from vessels to shore by punts and then carted across tidal flats. In 1865-67 authorities built a long jetty extending past the mud flats and shallow water. The port traded in meat, sugar and coal.

Directly east of Bowen lies Gloucester Island National Park. Access is by private or commercial boat from Airlie Beach or Dingo Beach. The island is home to a colony of endangered Proserpine rock-wallabies. The islands and surrounding waters are protected by the Great Barrier Reef World Heritage Area.

After checking in to my motel I went for a long walk around the beaches north of town. My destination was Mother Beddock rock, something I had never heard of until a few weeks ago but now was fascinated by. One Trip Advisor reviewer called it a “a big rock sitting on another rock looking as though it should just tumble down” and it’s hard to disagree with that assessment. This large balancing granite rock was the star attraction of the Mother Beddock track. This view was from Rose Bay.

After Rose Bay it was a climb to view Mother Beddock’s at close hand. According to the December 29, 1939, Cairns Post there was an early Bowen settler, a washerwoman named Mother Beddock who had a large pimple on her nose and “as the rock had some resemblence to this escreasance” it was named Mother Beddock’s Pimple, later shortened to Mother Beddock. 

This is the view east past Mother Beddock towards Bowen. The town’s prosperous economy is based on agriculture, fishing, tourism, and mining. Its rainfall is low for a tropical coastal town and the weather is sunny and warm most of the year making Bowen a candidate for the best climate in Australia, cyclones notwithstanding.

After the climb to the rock it was back down again to Murray Bay. This was a beautiful deserted spot where I took the time to get wet in the Coral Sea.

Then I was climbing again towards another lookout. Like many places in this part of Queensland, Bowen has a proud association with the Second World War. Up here authorities installed the first radar and anti-aircraft battery in North Queensland. The guns are gone but the mounting points are still there and the view remains superb.

Including the view down to Horseshoe Bay at the northern tip of the cape. Not hard to work out how it got its name.

After going down to Horseshoe Bay I continued the walk west along to Queens Bay where I parked my car for what must have been an 8-10km round trip. A delightful walk basking in late afternoon sunshine.

Then it was time for a libation in Bowen’s most famous pub, the Grand View Hotel. The hotel has been owned by the same family since 1918 and featured in Baz Luhrman’s film Australia. The hotel may have been the best thing about that turkey of a film. After a cleansing ale it was time for dinner at the motel and a nightcap ahead of a short trip further south to Airlie Beach the following morning.

Towards Charters Towers

Kronosaurus eats cat, Richmond.

My Catholic upbringing makes me a glutton for punishment. The latest manifestation of masochism was another road trip from Mount Isa to Brisbane via the coast out and the inland back, all up a 4000km trip mostly on cruise control.

This time I did the coastal part of the triangle first. I had decided night one would be in Charters Towers. There were a number of reasons to choose CT about 800km from Isa and 140km inland from Townville.

I was getting some coastal time over the next few days so a day inland wasn’t the end of the world. In fact it was the World, with Charters Towers having that very nickname and I went there not remembering how it got it.

But first stop was half way – 400km to Richmond. There I met Dr Patrick Smith the wonderful, but sadly departing soon, palaeontologist at Kronosaurus Korner. Dr Smith took me back about 105 million years when this part of Australia was part of a giant inland sea. That’s why this part of the world is so good for fossils, they survive longer in wet places.

Dr Patrick Smith talks about ancient fish bones at Richmond’s Kronosaurus Korner pic.twitter.com/FEfFDCXyBa

— Derek Barry (@derekbarry) April 28, 2017

The museum is named for a 10-metre badass Australian marine version of T Rex. Kronosaurus basically ate everything that got in its way. So why is such a lovely place named for such a horrible creature? Dr Smith blames American paleo HA Longman who named the animal in the 1920s. I wrote about all this here. Dr Smith was great fun and very knowledgeable and it’s no surprise bigger museums in Sydney want him back. He’s going places, even if sometimes it’s 100 million years in the past.

I was going places too and I reluctantly turned down an offer to go to a dig site as I still had another 400km to drive. On I went to Charters Towers. Charters is in Gudjal country, a people who lived across the region but they had their favourite places – along the Burdekin and Broughton Rivers, in the lagoons of basalt country and west to what is now White Mountains National Park on top of the Great Dividing Range. I always stop at White Mountains to enjoy the astonishing view.

CT is the centre of the current state seat of Dalrymple, about to be demolished in recent Queensland seat changes and merged with Mount Isa in the new seat of Traeger (named for Alfred Traeger who invented the pedal radio used by the Flying Doctors.) It will be a big country to traverse.

It was gold that first brought European settlers to Gudjal country. In late 1871 Hugh Mosman, George Clarke, John Fraser and Aboriginal helper Jupiter were prospecting when they lost their horses in a storm. In their search they found gold instead and registered their find as “Charters Towers”. The Gudjal were squeezed out as 25,000 Europeans crammed the region in the following years, all eager to get rich. The town itself got rich quick and around 60 ornate Victorian buildings are now heritage-listed. One of these is the 1891 City Hall, originally housing the Queensland National Bank and now home to Charters Towers Regional Council.

The Australian Bank of Commerce was designed in classical revival style by Scottish emigrant architect Francis Stanley and built in 1891. Originally called the Australian Joint Stock Bank, it was the largest bank in Queensland with 19 branches. It was taken over by the Australian Bank of Commerce in 1909. After a 1931 merger with the Bank of New South Wales it became a private building. In 1992 Dalrymple Shire bought the building and opened it as the World Theatre in 1996.

This is the geographical and commercial heart of Charters Towers. the junction of Mosman and Gill Streets. The population has decreased considerably since the goldrush days but over 8000 people still call it home and there is plenty of traffic when I come through around mid Friday afternoon. The town remains prosperous on the back of three industries: mining, agriculture and education (the town is home to several boarding schools).

At its peak Charters Towers was second only to Brisbane in importance in Queensland and was a thriving financial centre with its own stock exchange. Built in 1888, the Stock Exchange Arcade traded from 1890 to 1916, when it was shut down due to diminishing goldmine returns and decreased population. The Arcade fell into disrepair but was saved from demolition in the 1970s and transferred to the National Trust. Heritage listed since 1992, businesses, cafes and an art gallery still call it home.

After admiring the buildings it was time for a walk to Towers Hill. At the lookout on top of the hill is the water tower with the wording “The World”. It its heyday, it was said that everything you might desire could be had here. With no reason to travel elsewhere for anything, Charters Towers was the World. The walk to the top has been improved in recent years with a new 800m recycled plastic boardwalk completed in June 2014. I forgot to take a photo of the track.

I did take a photo of signage on the walk promoting the town’s heritage. Never mind the garish red, but this photo was taken when Tower Hill’s 57-metre high chimney dominated the landscape. It was built in the 1880s when goldmining reached the water table and a new way was needed to cover the gold from pyrites (the iron sulphide “fool’s gold”). The pyrite works plants concentrated and re-treat the tailings from the mills. Tailings were roasted slowly in a large reverberatory furnace to expel sulphur from the pyrites and to oxidise base metals to reduce absorbable chlorine. They added salt, then chlorine and water and it formed a solution of gold chloride, furnace-fed via gravity over three hours. When in 1901 manager David Brown found out his salary was to be reduced, he shot the company chairman and was hanged at Boggo Road gaol. The chimney became known as “Brown’s Folly”. Like Brown it met a grim end, demolished in 1942 as a hazard to wartime aircraft.

The war left its mark on Charters Towers, barely one hundred miles from the front line at Townsville. Charters Towers was an important back-up site for the army with a new airport built and several units stationed there. Tower Hill was an observation point and exercise ground. The army left unexploded munitions, and with abandoned mineshafts, it is a treacherous environment for anyone going off-piste. An old bomb shelter have been transformed into an interpretive centre with a five minute movie about CT’s role in the war.

The view from the top is impressive looking out east to the town centre and the Burdekin river beyond slowly winding its way towards the coast near Home Hill.

The view south from Tower Hill. Mount Coolon (I think) in the distance.

Abandoned bits of the old pyrite works on Tower Hill.

When I walked back into town, I found many people standing around the pavements and SES staff guarding the road which was closed off. I asked one of the SES what was happening. “There’s a parade coming”. He was not wrong. There was a parade coming.

After the band and floats advertising a music festival there were two guys on horses waving to the crowd. Lo and behold the one on the near side to me was local federal MP and national identity Bob Katter, now 72. He was loving every minute of the attention. Katter on a horse in his home town, you couldn’t make this up.

The floats were celebrating the 40th anniversary of Charters Towers Country Music Festival on that weekend. All roads led to the local civic centre for an opening concert that night. But I was buggered after my Catholic day of driving and went to bed early.  Adventures tomorrow lay ahead in Bowen and I needed a good night sleep for that.