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It is great news for the entire Arabian Gulf that Saudi Arabia and Qatar are finally mending some fences, agreeing to finally set their maritime borders.
It isn't just that good cross-border relations make good economic sense. Qatar's natural gas - as well as reserves in other countries - is going to become increasingly important to the region, especially as prices follow in the wake of oil's meteoric rise.
Some analysts are even predicting that natural gas prices will surpass crude, as demand from Europe and Asia for cleaner-burning fuel rises faster than supply.
Already, demand across the Gulf region is on the rise too. The United Arab Emirates has been on a building spree with gas-fired power stations and desalination plants, and governments throughout the Gulf are planning to invest roughly $100 billion on gas powered utilities over the next decade.
One estimate has 60 per cent of the power and desalination plants powered by natural gas as of 2020, up from 46 per cent today.
As demand increases, it is going to be increasingly important to get gas distributed around the region as cheaply as possible.
Saudi Arabia, where locally produced gas is re-injected into wells to boost oil production, stands to benefit from easier transport as much as every other country in the Gulf.
In the past, potential regional pipelines have run into Saudi roadblocks, including several attempts to derail the Qatar to United Arab Emirates Dolphin pipeline which has now started delivering gas and is set to pump onward to Oman. Another gas pipeline that would have delivered Omani gas to Kuwait was stalled by Saudi Arabia.
The region can't afford to have these types of projects stalled or killed all together.
Keep in mind that Qatar boasts of 895 trillion cubic feet of gas reserves, topped only by those in Iran and Russia.
That is a lot of potential, and currently underdeveloped, energy resource in a region where talk has lately centred around how much oil is left in the ground.
Sure, Qatar is building more facilities to compress natural gas into liquefied natural gas (LNG), which can be transported by ship anywhere in the world.
But that type of transport just adds to the price of the fuel - the gas has to be condensed into liquid form, shipped and then re-gasified at a special facility - especially when it should be relatively easy to build pipelines across the Arabian Gulf.
Ease of transport would also be excellent news for the UAE, where a gas deal between Abu Dhabi National Oil Company (Adnoc) and ConocoPhillips is set to be signed on Tuesday.
The joint project to develop the Shah natural gas field in Abu Dhabi will provide another strong source of revenue for the emirates.
Although it doesn't get nearly as much publicity as Qatar, Abu Dhabi has the fifth largest gas reserves in the world, totalling more than 200 trillion cubic feet. At some point, those reserves are going to be further developed.
Overall, it is one of those rare win-win situations for Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC) countries.
Everyone, whether an exporter or an importer of natural gas, stands to benefit from increased cross-border relations that make transportation, and sales, easier.
That also means energy companies stand to benefit as well, along with all related industries.
International export is surely going to be financially important. But there is no reason to pass up an easy market that sits literally in your own backyard.
After all, the whole point of the GCC is to make Gulf borders more permeable and the region more economically competitive.
The writer is a freelance journalist based in Alaska, USA.
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