In the current environmental debate where the aviation industry is in focus, Qatar Airways has with a series of well-known company names such as Shell, Airbus, Rolls Royce, Qatar Science & Technology Park, Woqod (Qatar Fuel Company) and Qatar Petroleum decided to develop a synthetic jet fuel.
Several billion U.S. dollars will be invested in this research project which will ultimately result in substantially reduced carbon emissions in the aviation industry.
The vision is that natural gas shall be the basis for the synthetic jet fuel and the process is known as GTL - Gas To Liquids.
While this research project was announced, the Gulf countries decided in a long term strategy to expand and enlarge air links with Scandinavia, with a focus on business and leisure travelers. This means that Qatar Airways expands the number of flights between Stockholm Arlanda Airport and Doha to 5 times per week.
The choice of Stockholm - Arlanda as Scandinavia´s center in 2007 was chosen after careful analysis, where the competition was between Stockholm, Oslo and Copenhagen. The deciding factor was that the number of companies in Sweden are many more than the number in Norway and Denmark.
Cecilia Helland