After its economic crisis, which occurred after the Quartet's boycott, Qatar began to seek any help to save its economy from collapse.

Qatar is aiming to capitalise on China’s fast growing demand for natural gas as well as its expanding overseas investment and infrastructure pushes as the Gulf state tries to cushion the blows from a boycott by its neighbours, reported South China Morning Post.

Qatari Energy and Industry Minister Mohammed bin Saleh al-Sada said Qatar was the world’s top supplier of liquefied natural gas (LNG) and would increase production by about 30 per cent by 2024 to meet projected demand, particularly from East Asia.

“We expect China will continue to import more because of its environmentally conscious policies. And we will avail ourselves to the demand,” he said in Doha last month.

China’s imports of LNG grew by about 46 per cent to 38 million tonnes last year, making the country the second-biggest LNG consumer of the fuel after Japan. Qatar accounts for roughly a fifth of those supplies. 

China also imported about 30 million tonnes of natural gas via pipelines and is on track to become the world’s biggest consumer of the fuel as it replaces heavily polluting coal as an energy source.

Al-Sada said the global supply of LNG had stagnated as few new projects came on stream but Qatar had been working on gradually ramping up its production by 2024, when the market would reach a balance.

“Qatar’s incremental increase of 30 per cent will be timely to satisfy this demand in the coming few years,” he said.

“Qatar has timed the production to coincide with the tightening market and this will help secure the demand of the East Asian countries.”

Al-Sada said Qatar had established “an excellent cooperative relationship” with China, and its LNG supply was not interrupted by the diplomatic crisis since last year.