Geography

Qatar is a peninsula in the east of Arabia, bordering the Persian Gulf and Saudi Arabia, in a strategic location near major petroleum deposits. Qatar occupies 11,437 square kilometres on a peninsula that extends approximately 160 kilometres north into the Persian Gulf from the Arabian Peninsula. The country shares its land border with the United Arab Emirates (UAE), with which it has a dispute in the Khawr al Udayd area. The boundary with Saudi Arabia was settled in 1965 but never demarcated. Qatar's northwest coast is fewer than 30 km from Bahrain.

Varying in width between 55 and 90 kilometres, the land is mainly flat (the highest point is 103 metres) and rocky. Notable features include coastal salt pans, elevated limestone formations (the Dukhan anticline) along the west coast under which lies the Dukhan oil field, and massive sand dunes surrounding Khawr al Udayd (an inlet of the gulf in the southeast known to local English speakers as the Inland Sea).

The highest point in Qatar occurs in the Jebel Dukhan to the west, a range of low limestone outcrops running north-south from Zikrit through Umm Bab to the southern border. This area also contains Qatar's main onshore oil deposits, while the natural gas fields lie offshore, to the northwest of the peninsula.

Doha is the capital of the country and the major administrative, commercial, and population centre. In 1993 it was linked to other towns and development sites by a system of about 1,000 kilometres of paved roads. Doha's international airport has an approximately 4,500-meter main runway, capable of receiving all kinds of aircraft.

The capital is located on the central east coast on a sweeping (if shallow) harbour. Other ports include Umm Said, Al Khawr and Al Wakrah. Only Doha and Umm Said are capable of handling commercial shipping, although a large port and a terminal for loading natural gas are planned at Ras Laffan, north of Al Khawr. Coral reefs and shallow coastal waters make navigation difficult in areas where channels have not been dredged.

Of the islands belonging to Qatar, Halul is the most important. Lying about 90 km east of Doha, it serves as a storage area and loading terminal for oil from the surrounding offshore fields. Hawar and the adjacent islands immediately off the west coast were the subject of a territorial dispute between Qatar and Bahrain, which was solved by the International Court of Justice (ICJ) in The Hague. In the 2001 decision, Bahrain kept the Hawar Islands and Qit'at Jaradah but dropped claims to Janan Island and Zubarah on mainland Qatar, while Qatar retained significant maritime areas and their resources.