Issue 845, 16 January 2009

Qataris consider ways of keeping Iranians off their rigs

The problem of Iranian penetration of Qatar’s exclusive economic zones (EEZs) has long been a thorny one for the Qatari Emiri Navy (QEN), the emirate’s coast guard and Qatari Emiri Air Force (QEAF). GSN’s periodic surveys of the Project National Security Shield (NSS) system of radar and coastal surveillance has focused on the deep paranoia and touchiness that Doha feels when confronted with Iran’s powerful and unpredictable naval forces. With the giant North Field/South Pars gas reserve not yet unitised, the shared field still has a ‘wild west’ feel about it, with the Iranians and Qataris staking out their claims with rigs instead of fence posts.

The issue has occasionally escalated to arms and the Qataris have not been backward about coming forward. The Iranians have certainly undertaken their fair share of dirty tricks – notably boarding and breaking into unmanned Qatar Petroleum (QP) rigs to steal machinery and data, or even machine-gunning such outposts. Together with the one or two industrial espionage cases brought against purported Iranian commercial spies in QP and Qatargas, it is tempting to think back to the Cold War intrigues.

Qatar, rather than Iran, has taken steps towards hot war on a number of occasions. In June 2004, a QEN patrol boat killed one Iranian and injured two others when they shot at the men as they sailed near an unmanned rig. Shortly beforehand, Iran had warned Qatar not to tap more than its share from the shared gas field. Although most media attributed the action to tension related to fishing rights in the mid-Gulf, security insiders have long said the action was a deliberate Qatari reaction to an oil rig break-in. The waters around such rigs are often used by fishermen as mooring points but Doha has no way of telling such trespassing from more serious incidents.

QP is currently installing multiple layers of protection on the rigs in order to reduce the ‘false positive’ alerts generated by fishermen and to react faster to genuine Iranian or terrorist threats. The system includes the following elements:

• detection – a Vessel Exclusion Barrier (VEB – boom) in the water and short-range radar detects vessels 500 metres out. CCTV, lights and a public address system can be used to identify and warn the vessel off;

• jamming – at 300 metres, radio jamming of communications and navigation is activated to prevent the use of radio-controlled bombs;

• inner barrier – at 50 metres out another VEB is met. If this barrier is breached, the incident is taken to be a serious penetration; and

• reaction – helicopter forces or patrol boats can be dispatched from Ras Laffan, from Doha, from various Qatari islands and from a Coast Guard mother ship in the fields. In extreme cases, Doha can scramble a helicopter-borne Naval Special Forces unit maintained in the capital for such tasks or could even use its alert force of combat aircraft. GSN’s canvassing among QEAF officers in recent years indicates that aerial interception of Iranian aircraft or terrorist light aircraft is a commonly exercised scenario.

Due to the small size of the QEN and Coast Guard, the response forces typically have not reached the area before genuine attackers have left. As the small patrol boat and fast patrol boat forces are viewed as too slow to reach such incidents, increasing emphasis is being placed on QEN special forces based on a mother ship in the North Field.