We lived in Kuwait on two occasions in 1995 and 2001 for a total of three years and in Qatar for almost four years from 2002 to 2006. In Kuwait, I was working for Kuwait Oil Company in a Corporate Planning role and lived first in Ahmadi and later in Abu Halifa. Our first time in Kuwait was only a few years after the Iraqi occupation and there was still much flaring of gas due to major damage to the oilfields. Kuwait is a small and desolate country but we took the opportunity to travel regularly to more interesting parts of the Middle and Near East. In Qatar, I worked first for Qatar Oil Company in Corporate Planning and then Qatargas as Manager for LNG Receiving Terminal development in UK and USA. I had first visited Qatar in 1985 on a business trip with BP and it was a country with a population of only 360,000 and the only town was Doha. When we lived there from 2002 the population had increased to about 700,000 but Doha was growing very quickly and had a population of more than 900,000 when we left in 2006. During my time there, Qatar was expanding its’ LNG business from about 10 million tonnes per annum to 77 mtpa and I was responsible for the development of sites for new LNG Receiving Terminals at Milford Haven in Wales and at Sabine Pass in Texas and the expansion of Elba Island in Georgia.

The work involved frequent travel to London, Paris and occasional trips to Houston for negotiations with ExxonMobil, ConocoPhillips, Shell and other companies. Qatar was an interesting place to live as there were interesting places to visit and camp like the “Inland Sea” that ius a large area of sand dunes located in the south by the Saudi border and the Zukreet pensinsula to the west. I had a Qatari pilot license as so was able to fly Piper Archers within Qatar and to places like Fujairah and Bahrain. The aircraft were owned by the Qatar Aeronautical College that was based at Doha International Airport. I also had a 20’ cutter rigged boat that I sailed on Doha Bay and to the nearby islands.