It is not only Dubai, the ambitious city-statelet that is reinventing itself as the Singapore of the region, pumping the wallets of tourists and financiers as its oil wells run dry.

The whole region needs more power and, above all, it needs more natural gas to generate the electricity that keeps the lights on, the water desalinated and the air chilled in the hothouse petrodollar economy. Like tigers chasing their tails, the Emirates are in a frantic dash for gas.

Natural gas is the fuel that keeps the Emirates’ economic motor running. Gulf states once burnt barrels of crude to generate electricity, but that wasteful and polluting practice is being phased out rapidly. Priced at $93, oil is the export cash crop that must be harvested daily, but gas is the fuel of choice for domestic power stations.

Gas used to be cheap in the Gulf. A decade ago, the methane that bubbled up with the oil was flared – a massive and extravagant bonfire. Now, it is piped into power stations and gas is becoming the new political and economic currency in the Gulf’s great energy game.

It is also more expensive. A decade ago you could not give away gas, but today a power station in Dubai has to compete for resources. It can no longer simply suck in surplus fuel from neighbouring Abu Dhabi. Dubai’s stately rival in the race for nonoil income has the fifth-largest reserves in the world, of about 200 trillion cubic feet of gas under its feet, but, unlike the oil that made it rich, Abu Dhabi is struggling to turn its second natural legacy from wasted molecule into useful electrons. Much of Abu Dhabi’s gas is being pumped back into oil wells to keep the pressure up, but the vast untapped resource is waiting for development: sour gas, high in sulphur and an expensive technical problem. Instead, the gas-rich state is piping in supplies from Qatar, another Gulf rival, and the price is rising.