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Dallas, Texas - The US-Qatar Business Council (USQBC) hosted a business visit to Dallas, Texas on January 25th to engage key policy makers and the local business community to expand and enhance economic partnerships between the State of Qatar and the State of Texas.
The business visit featured the following participants:
During the business visit, Fahad Al-Dosari, The State of Qatar Commercial Attaché to the United States; and Mohammed Barakat, Managing Director and Treasurer of the Board of Directors of USQBC, met with Eric Johnson, Mayor of Dallas, to discuss enhancing business ties.
“Dallas is a welcoming city that boasts world-class assets and attractions and serves as the economic engine of the fourth-largest metropolitan area in the United States. We are also an increasingly international city, and we look forward to working closely with Qatar to deepen our ties and to promote trade and investment between their country and our booming city,” said Dallas Mayor Eric Johnson.
During the visit, the US-Qatar Business Council hosted a Business Seminar at La Cima Club in Irving, Texas and Private Reception hosted at Hotel Crescent Court in Dallas, Texas which provided a platform for participants to network, learn, and explore business opportunities between Texas and the State of Qatar.
On the occasion of the event, Rashid Al Deheimi, Consul General of Qatar to Texas, said, “The State of Qatar looks forward to building upon the already flourishing bilateral business relationship with the State of Texas. The event highlighted a number of untapped investment and partnership opportunities between Texas and the State of Qatar which are pivotal to further integrating the two economies.”
The Business Seminar included several presentations. Fahad Al-Dosari presented on Qatar’s attractive investment environment for US companies while Mohammed Barakat discussed the strength of the US-Qatar business relationship.
“The State of Qatar is committed to expanding the economic partnership with Texas,” said Fahad Al-Dosari, Commercial Attaché of the State of Qatar to the United States. “We look forward to further conversations on how our business communities can work together in areas within and beyond the traditional oil & gas sector, including advanced manufacturing, business and financial services, renewable energy and clean technology, logistics and defense among others.”
"Our visit to Texas consolidates and enhances the historical and ever-growing business relationship between Texas and the State of Qatar," said Mohammed Barakat, Managing Director and Treasurer of the Board of USQBC. "There continues to be incredible business synergies and untapped commercial opportunities between the two, and we expect even more investment & trade between them going forward."
The delegation then visited the John Bunker Sands Wetland Center with Rosewood Resources Executives for a tour. The John Bunker Sands Wetland Center focuses on environmental sustainability and is a unique public private partnership between North Texas Municipal Water District and The Rosewood Corporation to provide education, research and conservation opportunities pertaining to water reuse and supply, wetland systems, and wildlife habitat. Environmental sustainability and water conservation is a primary concern for Qatar and this visit highlighted the importance of environmental sustainability.
There is significant overlap between key industries in Qatar and Texas including oil and gas, defense, financial services, infrastructure, transportation, agriculture, and technology. Given Qatar’s prominence in the energy sector, Texas is a prime partner since it is the largest energy producing state in the US and had the second highest state GDP in the United States in 2021.
The bilateral business ties between the United States and Qatar continue to solidify with the total economic relationship between them exceeding $200 billion as of 2019. The US is Qatar’s largest foreign direct investor with a total of $110.6 billion in FDI and is the largest single source of exports to Qatar at $6.5 billion in goods in 2019. In the past five years, Qatar has imported over $23 billion worth of goods from the US, and over 850+ US companies now operate in Qatar.
Qatar has an outstanding relationship with Texas. In the oil & gas industry, Qatar Energy has partnered with ExxonMobil, ConocoPhillips, McDermott International, ChevronPhillips Chemical (CPC) and Excelerate Energy, all of which are headquartered in Texas. In 2019 Qatar Energy (QE) and CPC announced a joint venture to develop the largest ethylene production plant in the Middle East. The Golden Pass LNG export project is a $10 billion joint venture between ExxonMobil and QE in Sabine, TX and is expected to be operational in 2024.
Qatar is also an increasingly large investor in the United States having pledged over $45 billion in investments in the coming years, with key investments already having been made across multiple sectors including oil & gas, financial technology, real estate, food production, and hospitality, among others.