GCC’s energy sector can rework post. The crisis offers energy players an opportunity to refocus on semi-permanent property, getting ready for a world that depends so much less on fossil fuels
The crisis has intelligibly jolted the worldwide energy system, with the impact powerfully felt within the GCC countries that have long been supported by the organic compound sector.
With Brent crude costs nearing $20 a barrel as currently March 2020 (the lowest worth in nearly 2 decades), governments face variety of challenges. Despite its severity, energy players within the GCC—including governments and their national oil, gas, organic compound, and utilities companies—can treat this crisis as a chance to refocus on semi-permanent property.
In a worst-case state of affairs within which oil remains at $20 a barrel for a year, we tend to estimate that GCC governments might lose up to $500 million (Dh1.83 billion) every day in state oil revenue. Energy players within the region should currently walk a fine line between imperative and vital choices, levelling short, medium and semi-permanent trade-offs to navigate through the crisis.
Rather than looking ahead to the crisis to pass, these entities will take daring action these days and reinforce long-discussed reforms to become a lot of resilient and harden a world that depends so much less on fossil fuels.
Those are essential areas of focus. The foremost transformative changes can come back through longer-term strategic assessments. Broadly, the energy sectors of the GCC have 3 choices against that to start out taking immediate action: retrench, rethink or repower.
Already, several energy organisations have taken spectacular steps to mobilise, by maintaining business continuity and supporting national response plans within the face of huge challenges. Some modern players are seeking to stabilise, building their resilience within the medium term through price reduction programmes, worker development initiatives and alternative measures to arrange for the recovery.
Retrench: –
The most conservative approach is to assume that the basics of the energy business can quickly confirm themselves once the Crisis. In keeping with this line of thinking, there’s no want for a considerable pivot. Instead, governments will adopt a wait-and-see approach, suspending major actions till oil costs recover.
Within the meanwhile, they’ll target reducing prices and defer any development comes or alternative discretionary defrayment. The logic behind this argument is that if crude costs stay low, oil remains the foremost enticing supply of power and few users can switch to alternatives.
Rethink: –
The middle-ground approach is for governments to acknowledge that Crisis unconcealed some structural vulnerabilities within the energy sector and take steps to repair them. A key side is reinforcing efforts to make domestic offer chains and capabilities.
Under the “rethink” approach, firms might invest in chemicals and industrial clusters that give a method to integrate on the worth chain. Energy players might conjointly localise materials offer chains and supporting capabilities, through on-demand producing, analysis and development and specialised technical education and coaching. Conversion initiatives can result in bigger potency and firms will move toward the “circular economy”, within which restricted resources are compulsively recycled to cut back waste.
Previously, local-content initiatives sought-after to form jobs and diversify GCC economies. Those were noble aims, however the crisis has incontestable the fragility of world supply chains and therefore the imperative to supply all that you just have to be compelled to operate at intervals your borders.
Repower: –
Even a lot of bold, energy firms within the region could lead on the means in incubating clean and renewable energy businesses. Critically, these cleaner power sources would supplement—or replace—the native consumption of hydrocarbons, sanctionative firms to extract the most attainable export and conversion worth from their remaining reserves, even in a very world with semi-permanent low oil costs and heightened property issues.
As a result, the GCC might produce a brand new economy that might ultimately replace revenue from oil sales with worth coming back from new activities cherish inexperienced gas production and environmentally-sustainable serious industries.
The boldest strategic approach is to treat the crisis as a chance to essentially reshape the energy sector and harden the semi-permanent world transition faraway from carbon-based resources. This strategy would need daring action in many areas. First, energy players will acquire world assets at presently reduced costs so as to realize scale in downstream conversion industries.
That might give these players with access to international markets. This is a daring vision; however we tend to believe it represents the most effective path forward. Oil-dependent governments within the GCC should do quite just hope for the past to come. Instead, they need to seize the chance to rework.
