Abdullah bin Hamad Al Attiyah, the architect of Qatar’s LNG industry that transformed the country from a declining oil producer into one of the world’s wealthiest nations, died in London on Wednesday.
The former energy minister was born in 1953, nearly two decades before Qatar’s independence. He grew up in a country with few institutions, once telling me that, because there had been no hospitals or formal bureaucracy, births in his clan were recorded by an uncle, and a mix-up between lunar and solar calendars left his official birth year incorrect. Still, he was privileged: His family was prominent, and his second cousin and childhood friend was Sheikh Hamad bin Khalifa (who served as emir from 1995 to 2013).
After Hamad ousted his own father, he and Al Attiyah oversaw Qatar’s transformation through the development of the North Field, a huge gas resource neglected because it contained no oil. Fiercely loyal, Al Attiyah always credited the emir’s vision, though industry contemporaries stress that his own role in driving Qatar’s energy boom was undeniable.
As condolences and recollections pour in, the common thread — one that matched my own experiences when living in Doha — was that beneath Al Attiyah’s encyclopedic knowledge of the region’s history and mastery of energy politics, his humility and warmth was what drew people in. After his retirement from government, I would meet him in Doha to learn more about LNG pricing formulas and the details of Qatar’s energy industry. He would always add stories from his own life, like a conversation with Gaddafi’s spy chief at the George V hotel in Paris, or how he avoided being kidnapped by Carlos the Jackal in 1975. Some of those memories are on video — including this podcast with reflections on his relationship with Sheikh Hamad and the rise of Qatar’s energy industry.