Read MEI’s weekly briefing featuring expert analysis of key regional developments for the week ahead.
The Dorra Gas Field, located in shallow waters offshore in the northern Arabian Gulf, lies at the junction of competing territorial claims by Kuwait, Iran, and Saudi Arabia. With the growing gas demand in these countries, any production will be absorbed into the domestic network and the impact of production on the global gas and LNG market will be insignificant. However, the development of the field, if it occurs, may serve as a bellwether for regional relations.
Making the most of Iran’s reserves will require it to develop shared fields like Dorra/Arash, a gas field located offshore in the northern Gulf, where Iran must vie with competing claims from neighboring Kuwait and Saudi Arabia. In the past, Iran has often neglected its joint gas fields as a result of sanctions and focused instead on meeting its rapidly growing domestic needs through exploiting non-shared fields, but the country says this must change going forward.
Efforts to restore confidence between the U.S. and the Arab Gulf states took a first step with the recent formation of a new naval task force, known as the Combined Maritime Forces-153 (CMF-153), to improve maritime security in the Red Sea, Bab el-Mandeb, and the Gulf of Aden, including the hotspot of Yemen. Established in mid-April, the new task force intends to target weapons smuggling for Ansar Allah, as the Houthi militias are officially known, as well as human trafficking and the drug trade.
Egypt’s energy policy is helping to change the terms of the global debate on climate change by demonstrating that there is a basic compatibility between developing domestic natural gas resources and developing renewable energy sources. Disproving the dogma that natural gas and renewables are in a zero-sum competition, Egypt is advancing as a leader in renewable energy development while also increasing its offshore natural gas production capacity.
Read MEI’s weekly briefing featuring expert analysis of key regional developments for the week ahead.
While the holy month of Ramadan is known for increased food consumption in Egypt and other Muslim-majority countries, Elham Mohamed, 40, a government employee, said it was very difficult for her just to make ends meet this year. “I had to give up many of the items I usually buy during Ramadan,” she said. “Prices have gone crazy. Even the basics, such as bread, rice, sugar, flour, eggs, and cooking oil, have all gone up,” she added.
In recent remarks, the Israel Defense Forces’ (IDF) Chief of Staff Aviv Kochavi announced preparations for a potential upcoming military operation, foreshadowing a possible move against Iran. Kochavi’s announcement came shortly after Israel and the foreign ministers of four Arab nations — Morocco, Egypt, the UAE, and Bahrain — along with U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken, met at the Negev Summit in the Israeli desert to lay the foundation for a strategic military alliance to deter “Iran and its associated militias,” as Israeli Foreign Minister Yair Lapid put it.
Saudi Aramco seeks to enter the global gas business again. The company aims to build new business opportunities in the hydrogen and CCS sectors utilizing forecasted new domestic gas production. Its main challenges are long-term consistent commodity-cycle-insulated investment and domestic gas resources.
The global response to Russia’s invasion of Ukraine has focused new attention on friction between the United States and its traditional partners in the Gulf and reinforced skepticism regarding the United States’ status as the dominant international partner in the region. It’s time for both sides to identify a realistic way forward that sheds outdated notions of mutual obligation without becoming merely transactional.
Read MEI’s weekly briefing featuring expert analysis of key regional developments for the week ahead.
The war in Ukraine has brought back to the forefront the conversation about the need for new investments in oil and gas for the foreseeable future. As the calls multiply for Gulf producers to step in and fill the gap in gas and oil supplies as Russia faces sanctions, producers now feel vindicated after being shunned, and even targeted, at the COP26 in Glasgow last year.
As the price of wheat has shot up following the Russian invasion of Ukraine, so too has the cost of Egypt’s bread subsidies, raising questions over their sustainability and potentially opening the door for an increase in the price of subsidized bread for the first time in decades.
Seven years on from the launch of the Saudi-led coalition’s military campaign on March 26, 2015, the civil war in Yemen remains stalemated. The fundamental realities of the conflict have not changed substantially in over five years. Meanwhile, the conditions under which the majority of innocent Yemenis are living continue to deteriorate. It’s time to consider measures that can promote an end to the conflict and lay the groundwork for post-conflict reconstruction.
When the leaders of Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates decline phone calls from the president of the United States, rebuff his requests to help lower oil prices, and shy away from condemning Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, and when the U.A.E. hosts Syrian dictator Bashar al-Assad in Abu Dhabi, there is no doubt that a major crisis in U.S.-Arab Gulf relations is under way.