Oil and development

Materie:	Appunti
Categoria:	Lingue
Voto:	2 (2)
Download:	41
Data:	17.05.2000
Numero di pagine:	2
Formato di file:	.doc (Microsoft Word)

Oil and development
Qatar is a small country on the shores of the Persian Gulf. It is a desert country, and before they had discovered oil there, most people made a living out of herding sheep and goats from one oasis to another. Life was short and comforts few. For some people of Qatar this is still true, but for most of them life has greatly changed.
Qatar has been fortunate to find a valuable resource like oil, but developing on oil industry is not always easy. 300,000 people live in Qatar, and there were not many industries there to use oil when they discovered it.
Even today the oil is mainly exported because industry has not developed much yet.
Natural gas occurs with oil in Qatar. While Britain uses the gas as a fuel, Qatar burns off most of it, because possible markets for the gas are too far away.
Some of it is used to create fresh water for the people of Qatar. There is still not much water, so the government has built a desalination plant from profits gained from selling oil.
In the desalination plont, natural gas is used to heat sea water so that it evaporates. The steam is cooled to form pure water, and the salt is left behind as a deposit. It is costly water to produce, so there is a limit to the quantity which the plant can make. The shortage of water in turn limits industrial development in Qatar, because most industries use water. The problem which faces the Qatar government is a difficult one. There are more people in Qatar than before, and these people are richer than before. All this is thanks to oil. But industry has not developed very much yet, partly because of the small population, and also because Qatar has not other raw materials or resources which can attract industry into the country: “What’s going to happen when the oil runs out?” is the vital question.