Abu Dhabi: The total volume of investments in the energy sector in the Middle East and North Africa (Mena) region to reach $740 billion during the period 2013 to 2017, stressing that Saudi Arabia would be the largest investor with a total of $165 billion followed by the UAE with about $107 billion, a report by the Arab Petroleum Investment Company (Apicorp) revealed.
The report showed: “The UAE and Saudi investments in the oil and gas sectors as well as electric power will approximately form 36.5 per cent of the total energy investments in the region.”
Apicorp, an inter-Arab joint stock Corporation, emanating from Opec, said that the volume of investments in the energy sector in the region has risen sharply in the past few years because some countries had resumed a number of projects.
The report showed that more than 75 per cent of these investments will be carried out in seven countries which have large hydrocarbon reserves, namely Saudi Arabia, the UAE, Kuwait, Qatar, Algeria, Iran and Iraq.
The report said that Algeria jumped to third place in the volume of investments during the last five years with estimated investments of more than $80 billion because of international sanctions on some other countries, making it a lucrative market for investors in the field of gas and oil.
The report estimated the volume of investments in Iraq by about $65 billion, while Qatar and Kuwait ranked sixth and seventh respectively.
Apicorp said that energy projects in the Mena had seen many challenges, particularly the high cost of projects and fuel supply crisis for these ventures, particularly providing them with gas.
The report also pointed out the rate of depletion of gas in the region has reached “dangerous” levels in more than half of the countries that have large reserves of gas.
Apicorp called on these countries to develop their fields to make up for the quantities produced, saying that if they don’t develop the fields, the supply will be at risk, especially in Bahrain, Kuwait, the UAE, Libya, Yemen and Iraq.
