1. Yemen’s Houthis Revive Threats to Saudi Arabia on Conflict’s Nine-Year Anniversary

    ...lks and captured the capital Sanaa (MEES, 19 December 2014). But now, nine years later, the battle-hardened Houthis are stronger than ever, having consolidated their positions in Yemen and secured more Iranian backing. As Saudi Arabia has sought to extricate itself from Yemen’s conflict and thaw re...

    Volume: 67
    Issue: 13
    Published at Fri, 29 Mar 2024
  2. Baghdad & Erbil Locked In Standoff As Oil Exports To Ceyhan Come To Complete Halt

    ...ound 500,000 b/d of crude oil from northern Iraq to its export terminal at Ceyhan following a long-awaited ruling by the Paris-based International Chamber of Commerce (ICC) on the case filed by Iraq in 2014 against Turkey for facilitating Iraqi Kurdistan’s independent oil exports. Turkey’s swift re...

    Volume: 66
    Issue: 13
    Published at Fri, 31 Mar 2023
  3. KRG-Baghdad Rapprochement To Be Tested By Budget Agreement

    ...ll under central government monitoring and all other similar accounts shall be closed.” These points have also been enshrined in Article 14 of the proposed 2023 budget legislation. Since the KRG began independent oil exports in 2014, revenues have been paid into an escrow account with Turkey’s Ha...

    Volume: 66
    Issue: 12
    Published at Fri, 24 Mar 2023
  4. Iraqi Kurdistan Unilaterally Imposes New Payment Formula On IOCs

    ...pacted by government diktats. Payment delays are not a new development in Kurdistan, with previous instances following the 2014/15 price collapse and the Covid-19 pandemic. But firms speaking at a SpareBank 1 conference in Norway earlier this month expressed puzzlement at the delays this time. DNO CF...

    Volume: 66
    Issue: 10
    Published at Fri, 10 Mar 2023
  5. Marib Conflict Threatens Yemen’s Struggling Oil Sector

    ...ipments for both crude feedstock and products output. Since Yemen’s civil war broke out in 2014 the damage inflicted on the country’s already long-suffering population has been severe. In 2015, Saudi Arabia entered the fray concerned that Houthi gains could essentially give rise to a Yemeni Hezbollah on...

    Volume: 64
    Issue: 12
    Published at Fri, 26 Mar 2021
  6. China’s Imports of Iranian Oil Jump: Will Biden Act?

    ...uld be the highest monthly figure since April 2019 according to Kpler. For what it’s worth the highest ever crude figure in the official Chinese import stats was 798,000 b/d set back in April 2014; April 2019 was just below this at 787,000 b/d. But whilst the official figures – which presumably re...

    Volume: 64
    Issue: 11
    Published at Fri, 19 Mar 2021
  7. Repsol & Shell Leave Morocco; Repsol Quits Iraqi Kurdistan

    ...iting pending official ratification.” Repsol has since 2014 held 75% of Ghrab Offshore Sud, a deepwater ‘Atlantic margin’ block some 100km northwest of Rabat (state firm ONHYM has 25%) and further offshore from the firm’s 2009 'sub-commercial' Anchois discovery. The sole activity here in recent years ha...

    Volume: 64
    Issue: 09
    Published at Fri, 05 Mar 2021
  8. Israeli-Arab Relations Under The Spotlight As Leviathan Start-Up Nears

    ...More than $17bn-worth of gas sales deals have been signed since 2014 to supply Israeli gas to Jordan and Egypt despite sporadic public disapproval, primarily in Jordan. Crunch time is fast approaching with the 22tcf Leviathan field due online by year’s end. Israel’s relations with Egypt ha...

    Volume: 62
    Issue: 13
    Published at Fri, 29 Mar 2019
  9. Lebanon Power Overhaul Gathers Pace

    ...e map) was supposed to be the main driver. Work on ‘Deir Ammar-2’ restarted last year after the energy ministry and contracting firm J&P Avax renegotiated a previous $435mn EPC deal into a 20-year BOT agreement, thus settling a scandalous multi-million-dollar arbitration dispute dating back to 2014. Bu...

    Volume: 62
    Issue: 11
    Published at Fri, 15 Mar 2019
  10. Algeria’s Regime Under Threat

    ...en protests against the regime in the past, but none like this one. Bouteflika, in Geneva for what officials describe as a “routine health check,” was unable to present his own campaign papers for the coming election, a reminder of 2014 when he left it to right hand man Abdelmalek Sellal to de...

    Volume: 62
    Issue: 10
    Published at Fri, 08 Mar 2019
  11. Can Iraqi Kurdistan’s Bickering Factions Grasp Key Opportunities?

    ...operation has at least provided the central government with an alternative to its stretched southern export infrastructure. Use of the pipeline will provide an interesting litmus test, as federal Iraqi exports through the pipeline have started and stopped several times since in 2014. In Prime Minister Ad...

    Volume: 62
    Issue: 10
    Published at Fri, 08 Mar 2019
  12. Iran Looks To Europe As Trump Fears Threaten Embattled Economy

    ...ump from the second half of 2014 then hurt Iran further, with oil revenues bottoming out at $27bn in 2015 before rising to an estimated $59bn last year. For any re-imposition of US sanctions to hit Iran where it hurts, in the pocket, it’s going to need to be coupled with cooperation from foreign pa...

    Volume: 61
    Issue: 13
    Published at Fri, 30 Mar 2018
  13. Sudan’s Upstream Oil & Energy Sector: Investors Sought But IOCs Remain Cautious

    ...gure at 45% in 2014), with hydropower and oil burning accounting for almost all of the country’s installed capacity (see below). In a 27 November speech Mr Osman flagged up increasing capture of associated gas and pursuing a program to exploit non-associated gas reserves as a priority. But, wi...

    Volume: 61
    Issue: 11
    Published at Fri, 16 Mar 2018
  14. Iraq’s Politicized 2018 Budget Aims To Slash Deficit

    ...ached this would likely only be implemented in the second half of the year (MEES, 2 March). Iraq is banking on an $8.1bn revenue gain (9.5% in real terms) over 2017’s revised budget expectation as it struggles to rein in the double digit deficits it has routinely posted since 2014’s oil price crash. Oi...

    Volume: 61
    Issue: 10
    Published at Fri, 09 Mar 2018
  15. Middle East Adjusts To Trump’s Foreign Aid Game

    ...e 1978 Camp David accords, the US has given Egypt an average of $1.6bn/year in foreign aid, with the lion’s share, an average of $1.3bn going to the Egyptian military. The US slashed aid to Egypt by $1.4bn in 2014 following the coup d’état carried out against Muhammad Mursi’s democratically elected go...

    Volume: 61
    Issue: 09
    Published at Fri, 02 Mar 2018
  16. Libyan Oil Output Gains Go Into Reverse Amid Growing Instability

    ...rce. The Third Force wrested control of the Sharara oil fields from Tebu and Zintani members of the local Petroleum Facilities Guard in November 2014. There were reports in March that the Third Force had withdrawn from the region, but an LNA spokesman said in late March that negotiations over control of...

    Volume: 60
    Issue: 13
    Published at Fri, 31 Mar 2017
  17. Rosneft: Russia Mixes Business With Politics In Mena Expansion

    ...rdish oil since 2014 to $3bn, implying Rosneft has coughed up around $1bn. There are indications that Rosneft is using this as leverage over the cash-strapped government. Reuters reports that Rosneft is after light crude for its German refineries, which dovetails with Rosneft’s statements. Two days af...

    Volume: 60
    Issue: 12
    Published at Fri, 24 Mar 2017
  18. Baghdad Close To Winning War In Mosul; Can It Win The Peace?

    ...rruption and lack of development of areas outside of Baghdad helped to facilitate the emergence of IS in 2014 (or more accurately its re-emergence from the embers of Al-Qa’ida in Iraq). Iraq’s leaders have a challenging set of circumstances if they are to prevent the same mistakes from being repeated. MO...

    Volume: 60
    Issue: 11
    Published at Fri, 17 Mar 2017
  19. Lebanon’s Political And Economic Struggles Continue

    ...Lebanon achieved a major political breakthrough in October 2016; it ended a two-year standoff between various political groups which had prevented the election of a consensus president to succeed Michel Sulaiman after his term ended in May 2014. But sizeable structural problems persist and it...

    Volume: 60
    Issue: 09
    Published at Fri, 03 Mar 2017
  20. MEES Special Report: Jihadist Instability In North Africa And Beyond

    ...the city is imminent. That same day, IS also engaged in small arms fire against Firebase Bell, a US artillery outpost in northern Iraq. US forces returned to Iraq in 2014, but Firebase Bell is the first independent US base of its kind, having only been staffed two weeks earlier, and came under fi...

    Volume: 59
    Issue: 12
    Published at Fri, 25 Mar 2016