India Qatar Joint Naval Exercise – Free PDF Download

The news

• Maiden bilateral maritime exercise between the Qatari Amiri Naval Forces (QANF) and Indian Navy.
• Named Za’ir-Al-Bahr (Roar of the sea)
• The exercise helps to strengthen cooperation and enhance interoperability between the two navies.
• It majorly focuses on the fight against terrorism, maritime piracy, and maritime security.

Qatar – A brief bio

• The State of Qatar is located on the east coast of the Arabian Peninsula, bordering Saudi Arabia.
• It is approximately 160km long and 50-80km wide with a total land area of 11,586 sq km.
• Population – 6 million (75%- expatriates)
• Arabic is the official language.
• The currency is Riyal.

When and where Will be the exercise held ?

• 5-day exercise – 18 to 23 November 2019
• Location – In Qatar

The exercise includes a three-day harbour phase and two days’ sea phase.

1.  1^st phase includes seminars, professional interaction, official visits, sports activities and social and cultural events.
2. 2^nd (The sea) phase features a tactical maritime exercise involving the domains of surface action, air defence, maritime surveillance  and interdiction operation.

• Interdiction –  the action of intercepting and preventing the movement of a prohibited commodity/enemy force or person.

Importance of the exercise

• The exercise will be attended by Indian Navy Guided Missile Stealth Frigate INS Trikand and Patrol Aircraft P8-I .
• Growing energy dependency of India on Qatar
• Disturbances in the Persian gulf – energy security

INS Trikand

• INS Trikand is one of the frontline frigates of the Indian Navy.
• It is equipped with a versatile range of weapons and sensors.
• The ship is part of the Indian Navy’s Western Fleet and is under the Western Naval Command based in Mumbai

P8-I

• The P-8I is a long-range anti-submarine warfare, anti-surface warfare, intelligence, surveillance and reconnaissance aircraft capable of broad-area, maritime and littoral operations.
• The P-8I is a variant of the P-8A Poseidon that Boeing had developed for the U.S. Navy.
• The Indian Navy is the first international customer for the P-8.
• This aircraft is equipped with all the latest intelligence technologies.

Qatari Forces

• The Qatari Emiri Naval Forces participating in this Exercise include the versatile Anti-Ship Missile equipped Barzan Class Fast Attack Craft along with Rafale multi-task fighter aircraft.

India – Qatar relations

• India and Qatar established bilateral Diplomatic relations in 1973.
• Former Indian Prime Minister Manmohan Singh visited Qatar in November 2008.
• He signed a maritime defence agreement which was described by the Indian government officials as a ‘landmark’ agreement between both countries.
• Prime Minister Narendra Modi visited Doha on a two-day visit in 2016 .
• This visit was focused on economic relations, especially in the hydrocarbon sector.

Qatar’s Gas reserves

• Liquefied natural gas (LNG) is the liquid form of natural gas that has been cooled to enable easy and safe transportation of natural gas to distant places that are difficult to be reached by pipelines.
• Qatar holds almost 14 percent of total world natural gas reserves and is the third-largest in the world after Russia and Iran.
• Qatar is the largest exporter of LNG in the world.
• Main export markets include South Korea, India, Japan and China in Asia, and Italy, UK and Spain in Europe.
• The country’s LNG exports stood at 104.8 billion cubic metres (bcm) last year.
• Revenues from the oil and natural-gas sectors amount to 60% of the country’s GDP.
• The Doha-headquartered Qatargas is the world’s largest LNG producing company.
• Its offshore operations are located approximately 80km northeast of Qatar mainland.

• Qatar plans to boost its LNG capacity by early 2024 to 110 million tons a year, up from around 77 million tons a year

• 40% of India’s natural gas imports are from Qatar

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