What’s Up in Middle East Oil and Gas Industry Now?

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Overview of Oil and Gas Middle East

Mid East Oil and Gas Industry: How big is it and how fast is it growing?

Middle East is the world’s leader of oil production. Saudi Arabia keep on being the largest oil producer in the region though, Iraq performs well as one of biggest growth rates of production. In the Middle East, oil and natural gas sector will need a total amount of $1.6 trillion of new investment within next two and a half decades. The high growth potential of this region is undeniable.

How about impacts of the discovery of shale in the US on the regional oil and gas market?

The revolution of light tight oil in the US will be important in addressing the world’s demand growth over next decade. Still, As the one and only large source of low cost oil, the Middle East will sure be growing and addressing global oil demand.

Requirements for advanced technology and know-how

The Middle East has been, for long, associated with low technology, low cost models of oil production though, the petroleum sector is now balancing ‘resource nationalism’ politics. Such factors as quickly increasing need for EOR (enhanced oil recovery), tight gas, heavy oil, sour gas, GTL, LNG, carbon capture and storage, clean fuels refineries, solar, nuclear technologies are pushing up new requirements for state-of-the-art technologies and know-how. This is associated with higher need for international oil enterprises and their technology.

What are main challenges facing the industry?

Oil producers in the Middle East are confronting challenges of competition and higher demand from domestic markets. The regional energy use is expected to increase by 77% by 2035, doubling the growth in production as per BP’s latest estimates, which could place pressure on governments that rely on oil export revenue.

Given Middle East markets centering on renewable energy, how about oil and gas industry in the long run?

Owning the globally largest oil and gas reserves, whether the Middle East is the proper advocate for renewable energy might be questionable. Still, with exceptionally good solar and wind conditions all over the region, a growing tight gas market and a higher recognition that hydrocarbon reserves can be gained for better use other than producing electricity, renewable energy is catching unprecedented attention in the region. The important investment by regional countries acts as a testimonial to the focus.

Oil and gas careers in the Middle East

Middle East talents

In Kurdistan, enterprises have been working hard to develop skills in the country and ensure effectiveness of knowledge transfer. Still, whilst the talent pool here is deepened, there lack workers with correct competencies to go around. In other words, it’s necessary to push up laborforce numbers by seeking abroad for engineers.

In Abu Dhabi, it seems that most of workers have been hired from the sub-continent in India and South East Asia. In Kurdistan and Iraq, most of skilled and unskilled employees are local ones though, for oil and gas projects, there is a substantial number of skilled expats from numerous countries.

High dependence on foreign workers

There still need a high number of foreign workers in the Middle East oil and gas industry
There still need a high number of foreign workers in the Middle East oil and gas industry.

The Middle East still highly relies on foreign workers in the oil and gas industry with about half of the industry’s workforce coming from expats. In spite of many educational initiatives by UAE to raise the proportion of local nationals entering the private sector, this trend can’t change in a short and medium term.

Expected salary in the Middle East

Middle East has, for long, been globally largest oil and gas producing region. It has expanded related activities all around the region, which has been creating great job opportunities. There are, indeed, some of the world’s largest oil and gas projects in this region, it’s a favorable destination to build a career. Also, Abu Dhabi is reportedly a really family friendly area. As far as salaries come, they aren’t much higher on a whole though, benefit packages are truly competitive and the skills that workers pick up when working here will help boost up earning potential.