The Middle East Energy

The year 2012 marks 80 years since the Kingdom made its initial oil discovery near Jebel Al Dukhan, or the “Mountain of Smoke”, in Sakhir. As the first GCC country to discover hydrocarbons, the Kingdom is now moving into a new period in its history where more complex techniques are required to extract its oil and natural gas deposits. The finite...

Smiles and handshakes both abounded at Khalifa Bin Salman Port as ministers and officials celebrated the launch of the new ship Bahrain Vision at a ceremony in late November 2011.

For most of the last decade the government focus has been on building new plants to catch up with skyrocketing demand for power. Now the focus is switching to connecting up the disparate residential and industrial consumers to the national grid. In the water sector, the aim is to build up storage capacity from 1.24m to 2.37m cu metres so as to...

While the export of crude oil remains a central part of Kuwait’s economy, in the longer term, the government has targeted economic diversification. The most straightforward way to accomplish this is to use the country’s most lucrative natural asset to produce higher-value petrochemicals and refined products. To that end, the government is looking to...

For many, the passage of the National Development Plan in 2010 heralded an opportunity for Kuwait’s non-energy-related industries to finally come to the fore of the country’s economic development. Indeed, desire to diversify the country’s income stream – around 90% of government revenue over the last 10 years has come from oil receipts – has led to...

As the country’s demand for electricity continues to grow, expanding domestic power generating capacity is an increasingly important issue. While the government has worked to add capacity in recent years – notably, the first phase of the 2000-MW Sabiya power station came on-line in 2011 – more will need to be done to avoid any potential shortfalls...