A $290 Billion Investment Cements Gas’s Relevance for Decades

As delegates at the annual UN climate talks in Dubai celebrated last month’s historic deal to move away from fossil fuels, tens of thousands of laborers just across the Persian Gulf in Qatar were chasing a different goal: make the world’s largest natural-gas export facility even bigger.

At a time when some see oil demand nearing its peak and coal is likely to face a slow but steady decline, the energy sector is betting hundreds of billions of dollars that the third leading fossil fuel — natural gas — has a place in the world’s energy mix through at least 2050. That lifespan hinges on ...