Energy

Talk to anybody working in the Omani oil and gas sector and it’s not long before the question of human resources arises. “The reservoirs here are hugely challenging, so the competency gap is a problem, but it would even be a problem in the US or any other market. We need to work with the government to provide adequate training,” Chokri Ben Amor, the general manager of...

Stepping up efforts to capitalise on its hydrocarbons wealth, Oman is boosting its downstream industrial capacity by expanding the petrochemicals sector and providing the fuel stocks needed to power other industries. However, the success of this programme still pins much of the country’s economic growth on its oil and gas resources. The...

The sultanate has a proven track record in the extraction of unconventional oil and gas. Its Block 61 project, undertaken with BP, is one of the most ambitious tight gas drilling projects in the world and, in the view of many in the industry, the technology employed there represents the future of gas production in the sultanate. “In Oman,...

The Gulf is often synonymous with “easy” oil, massive reservoirs that sit invitingly on Jurassic or Cretaceous shelf limestones. Oman’s hydrocarbons wealth, however, has proven a more challenging proposition. Dispersed in complex clusters, the difficulties associated with exploiting the sultanate’s oil and gas reserves have made the nation a...

One of the achievements of Oman’s national economic strategy in recent decades is the successful utilisation of its hydrocarbons wealth to bring about societal development in successive five-year plans. Revenues from the sultanate’s oil and gas industry have been diverted towards health care and education initiatives that have brought about...