Energy

Lebanon is steadily plunging into total darkness. Decades of political bickering, weak governance, and vested interests have taken their toll on the power sector and are developing into economic and humanitarian crises. A long-term strategy focused on improving the sector’s governance is needed. In the short term, however, immediate actions such as distributed renewable energy and out-of-the-box financing mechanisms should be taken to avoid the darkest hour.

In spite of the growing political distance between Riyadh and Abu Dhabi, it was economic factors that played the key role in the UAE decision not to support the extension of the OPEC+ agreement until the end of 2022, thus putting on hold the cartel’s decision to increase production in the coming months. The OPEC+ agreement in place since December 2016 may have finally run its course. The medium term will see a changed landscape among oil producers, not just in the GCC, but globally as they compete for customers in emerging markets, the only place where oil demand is expected to increase after 2030, and as they attempt to transform their businesses across energy products. The national oil companies that can access capital, attract new investment, offload assets, and be nimble enough to grow across energy lines, whether it be hydrogen, solar, or even natural gas, will be the ones that thrive. Producers like Libya, Iraq, Iran, and even Russia and Saudi Arabia may be at a disadvantage in accessing new investment and pursuing transformation. The future of OPEC and its ancillary partners is one of intense competition and divergent time horizons for hydrocarbon exploitation.

The Biden administration’s goals in climate policy, renewable energy infrastructure investment both domestically and globally (the Build Back Better World, or B3W, initiative), and its Middle East policy may be on the verge of a collision. While the administration would like to dial back its engagement in the Middle East at least militarily, the region will be essential to meeting U.S. foreign and domestic energy goals.

In the past few months, several articles have been written on the significant rise in the Saudi female labor force participation rate (LFPR) from 17.7% in Q2, 2016 to 33.2% in Q4, 2020. Interestingly, this increase in female LFPR was not coupled with a rise in unemployment, which often occurs when workforce participation rises for a particular group. In fact, the unemployment rate among female nationals declined to its lowest level in four years, at 24.4% in Q4, 2020. However, it still remains over twice as high as that for male nationals. Another positive labor market indicator, albeit one receiving little attention from analysts, is the significant change in the employment rate among Saudi women. In other words, Saudi women not only increased their share in the workforce, but were also able to gain jobs once they entered the labor force.

Oil and gas have long dominated trade and investment flows between Singapore and the Gulf. In the wake of two new projects — one in Singapore and the other in the United Arab Emirates — unveiled last month, this article considers whether Singapore and the Gulf are on the cusp of a new level and type of economic relations.

The factor of Iranian oil, while important for the situation in the oil market, turned out to be somewhat overestimated in terms of its impact on OPEC+ decision-making.

Sunday was a festive day in Baghdad. The last time Iraqis had received an Egyptian president 30 years ago, the region was gearing up for war and uncertainty as the late President Hosni Mubarak shuttled between Baghdad and Gulf capitals prior to Saddam Hussein’s invasion of Kuwait in 1990. The circumstances were quite different on June 27, when Egyptian President Abdel-Fattah el-Sisi and King Abdullah II of Jordan were given the red-carpet treatment at a tripartite summit marking the fourth meeting between the leaders of the three countries aiming to form a new regional alliance.

Egypt, Ethiopia, and Sudan are caught in a dangerous deadlock over the Nile River and despite what the international community seems to think, the risk of military confrontation among the three nations is not at all far-fetched. Addis Ababa began the second phase of filling the reservoir behind its giant Grand Ethiopian Renaissance Dam (GERD) in early May without an agreement with the riparian nations — Egypt and Sudan. However, much has changed over the past year and the second filling has played out rather differently from the first last July. In the intervening months Egypt has ramped up its diplomatic outreach and emerged as an influential player in the Nile Basin, the Horn of Africa, and East and Central Africa. Cairo succeeded in forging strategic alignment with Khartoum to exert diplomatic pressure on Addis Ababa, forming webs of alliances with different regional powers across East and Central Africa and the Horn of Africa to project power and influence, and exerting geopolitical forward pressure on Ethiopia in parallel with the diplomatic track to solve the GERD dispute. 

Over the past year, intensifying political and economic conflicts between the Kurdistan Region’s two hegemonic parties, the Kurdistan Democratic Party and the Patriotic Union of Kurdistan, have challenged the legal and institutional order in which the Kurdistan Regional Government operates. A new generation of leadership within the parties, a fraught relationship with the federal government, and a prolonged economic crisis have strained the relationship between the two parties to its breaking point.

Blessed with milder temperatures than its Gulf neighbors as well as abundant rain and snow fall, Iran is one of the last countries in the region to introduce a seawater transfer plan to fight unprecedented levels of drought. The plan, once fully implemented, could help build water corridors linking the shores of Iran’s southern Gulf to those of its northern Caspian Sea. Named the Hope Transfer Line, the plan promises prosperity for farmers and industrialists, and potable water for communities in some 10,000 villages and urban areas located in so-called Red Zones, a category that applies to regions coping with severe water scarcity. 

In this policy paper, Dr. Karen E. Youngsets out to delineate and compare economic diversification efforts underway in the GCC that might prove useful in the Iraqi context, for the state as a whole, and measures that might be adopted in the context of the Kurdistan region.

The Gaza war and violence against Arabs within Israel may slow investment from the Gulf.