It is the first time that a specific volume has been mentioned in connection with the to augment Dubai's gas supply with imports during the sweltering Gulf summer, when demand peaks due to air-conditioning. The annual amount of the contracted LNG supply works out at about 31 billion cubic feet. That is roughly equivalent to the contents of a small gasfield, like several that the UAE company has discovered in Egypt in the past two years. In recent years, Dubai has not discovered or developed even one gasfield, however small, and its . That is why the emirate is short of fuel for its power plants, and faces a difficult choice between importing LNG and burning oil for electricity. The decision to go with LNG imports has the better short-term outcome for the environment, but it is not ideal and is no cheap fix. LNG is natural gas at its most expensive, as the gas must be refrigerated to -160 degrees Celsius for loading onto tankers, and the receiving terminal must be equipped with specialised re-gasification facilities. The whole process is significantly more energy intensive than the alternative of sending gas through a pipeline. Energy could thus be saved if Qatar agreed to increase shipments through , through which it exports about 2 billion cu ft per day of gas to the UAE and Oman. The capacity of the pipeline is 3.2 billion cu ft per day, which means that the UAE could in theory receive extra pipeline gas equivalent to more than 9 million tonnes per year of LNG. That will not happen because Qatar, which owns , finds selling its main national product at international prices more profitable than supplying it at a discount to Gulf neighbours whose governments subsidise domestic gas consumption. As things stand, Dubai's supplementary summer gas supply may not even come from a nearby country such as Qatar, but could instead be shipped from as far afield as Sakhalin Island off the Pacific coast of Russia, or Australia. That was the case this summer with the . Dubai's purchase agreement is with Shell, which operates internationally, not Qatar. Shipping cargoes across such distances of course entails more fuel consumption than short-haul shipments, and more carbon emissions. Such are the environmental costs of the Gulf states' fuel subsidies. To read more on that subject, click .