MENA ENERGY INVESTMENT OUTLOOK 2020-2024
|
Foreword
The triple crisis—health, economic and potentially financial currently affecting the world, led to sharp cuts in capital expenditures, practical restrictions to projects and supply chains—Asian shipyards or specialized engineering from the Lombardy region in Italy—and a wider restructuring of the sector. Entering 2020, MENA countries had substantial financial reserves, almost USD1tn, and some countries were even underleveraged. Yet with governments mobilizing extensive stimulus packages to fight the direct and indirect effects of the COVID-19 pandemic, the five-year energy investment plans, even if reduced by 20%, will still require substantial input from a bearish private sector. The current vicious circle of low revenue, low investment, low output needs to be broken, and a virtuous cycle of investments in lower cost, lower-carbon, sustainable assets needs to be induced. APICORP’s MENA Energy Investment Outlook provides a much-needed cross-sectoral view of committed and planned investments in energy across the Middle East and North Africa (MENA) region. We deliberately focus on actual investment commitments because they provide a more precise outlook for the energy community on future capacity and possible production levels in the MENA region, as well as offering an additional angle on each country’s energy policies. We also deliberately focus on a five-year horizon because it enables us to capture lead times and planning cycles for most parts of the energy supply chain. For the financial community, including APICORP and our partners, our characterization of planned investments enables us to identify projects where funding support is still needed. Also, this enhances the understanding of the risks associated with these projects, whether political, commercial, industrial, technological or climate change related. Produced in support of APICORP’s corporate strategy, the MENA Energy Investment Outlook is our flagship publication and is at the heart of our mandate: our role is to facilitate private sector involvement and financing in the energy sector. The MENA Energy Investment Outlook is a living, open platform, fed with the insights of an engaged community and published as a neutral fact-based contribution to enrich the energy debate. We invite you to share your comments and feedback with us, in addition to any projects or investment opportunities you would like us to showcase in the upcoming sectoral deep-dive outlook reports this year and future annual outlooks. Dr. Ahmed Ali Attiga |
