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Copying The Qatari Playbook At Scale
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The Qataris are the wealthiest people in the world… It’s all because of natural gas, not oil… The same thing is happening in the U.S… This company might be the best investment opportunity of Porter’s lifetime… The U.S. Treasury just bought back more bonds than ever before… Musk versus Trump: a reader poll… |
Table of Contents
Most people think that the Saudis are the wealthiest people in the world (per-capita GDP).
But they’re not. And it’s not even close.
The Qataris are the wealthiest people in the world, with a per-citizen GDP of close to $500,000 annually.
No, they didn’t get rich with oil. They got rich with natural gas.
In 1971, they discovered one of Earth’s largest deposits of energy. This was a field so big its proven reserves were larger than all of the other known gas fields on the planet, combined. Called the North Dome, it is spread across an enormous area (4,000 square miles), deep below (10,000 feet) the seabed of the Persian Gulf.
There are around 2,000 trillion cubic feet of natural gas in these reservoirs, plus gas condensate – . the energy equivalent of roughly 250 billion barrels of oil. That’s equal to about 50 years’ worth of America’s total oil production at current rates.
Why should you care? Because something similar is happening in America right now.
We have discovered enormous natural gas reserves deep below the surface in West Texas, a huge field called the Permian Basin. In fact, the Permian is currently producing around 7 trillion cubic feet of gas per year, almost twice as much as is being produced by the Qataris.
And because this gas is produced as a by-product of oil production, the costs associated with this gas are even lower than in the Persian Gulf: this gas is virtually free. This flood of gas has kept natural gas prices extremely low in the U.S. for the last 15 years. And this huge field has allowed the United States to become the world’s leading natural gas exporter, creating an incredible economic windfall for the U.S. We generate almost $300 billion per year in energy export revenue.
There is one big difference though between the Middle East and the U.S. when it comes to energy. In America, the government doesn’t own this incredible resource. It isn’t shared with all of the citizens. In Texas, mineral rights are controlled by private shareholders, shareholders who will become some of the wealthiest people in the world.
And there’s one group of shareholders in particular who will benefit the most: liquefied natural gas (“LNG”) exporters.
This is going to take about a decade. But investors have the complete Qatari playbook to follow.
Let me show you.