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Abu Dhabi National Oil Company’s retail fuel arm Adnoc Distribution has set a price range of Dh2.35-2.95 ($0.64-0.80) per share in its initial public offering (IPO) on the Abu Dhabi Securities Exchange (ADX). The government is planning to sell between 1.25bn and 2.5bn shares in the business, equating to 10-20% of its share capital. The sale could garner $800m-$2bn for the state. The shares are expected to list on the ADX on 13 December.

Muscat is planning to spend OR12.9bn ($33.6bn) over the course of this year, OR400m more than forecast in the 2018 budget. According to local media reports, the budget is based on an oil price assumption of $58 a barrel, with total revenues forecast at OR10.1bn in 2019 The projected deficit of OR2.8bn is slightly lower than the OR3bn shortfall predicted in the 2018 budget.The government plans to borrow to cover most of the deficit, with OR2.4bn to be raised in international and domestic debt and the rest coming from withdrawals from reserves.

The application of renewable energy (RE) to replace hydrocarbons in generating electricity could provide an end to the Gulf’s ‘resource curse’, but right now the region lacks some of the tools needed to cope with the new era. Just as oil prices were hitting a three-year high in mid-January, the world’s RE industry was gathering in Abu Dhabi for the International Renewable Energy Agency (Irena)’s annual summit.

Rather than gaining a bounce from the opening up of the Saudi stock exchange (Tadawul), regional equities markets have been hit hard in the past month by the global turmoil related in part to collapsing Chinese markets. In a 24 August note, Capital Economics said the worst Middle East and North Africa (Mena) region stock market performers were largely concentrated in the Gulf, notably Saudi Arabia, Abu Dhabi and Dubai.

In an era when Gulf money has poured into English Premier League football clubs, Prince Alwaleed Bin Talal’s business empire has decided to invest in London Welsh, a British rugby union club.

The threat of another British-Saudi row hung in the air this week, as news emerged that Saudi Arabia was “insulted” by a UK parliamentary Foreign Affairs Committee (FAC) decision to review London’s relations with Riyadh. Saudi Arabia was “re-evaluating… historic relations with Britain”, the BBC said on 15 October, quoting Saudi ambassador to London Prince Mohammed Bin Nawaf Al-Saud. “All options will be looked at,” he ominously stated

Prime minister and interior minister Sheikh Abdullah Bin Nasser Bin Khalifa Al-Thani visited Kuwait in late August, where he held meetings with Emir Sheikh Sabah Al-Ahmed Al-Sabah, premier Sheikh Jaber Al-Mubarak Al-Sabah and deputy premier Sheikh Mohammed Al-Khalid Al-Sabah. “Fraternal relations between the two brotherly countries” were discussed, according to Qatar News Agency. The two countries enjoy decent relations and Doha has in the past used Kuwait’s good offices to help ease tensions with other regional countries.

The International Monetary Fund (IMF), the Central Bank of Tunisia and Islamic Development Bank held a three-day regional conference on Islamic banking and sukuk markets in December.

Gulf Co-operation Council countries began the Gulf Security 1 exercise on 26 October in Prince Naif Security City, Bahrain. The drill is a collaboration by GCC interior ministries and is intended to improve preparedness for security events and to develop co-operation and co-ordination between the GCC member states’ forces.

Emir Sheikh Tamim Bin Hamad Al-Thani was in Vienna in early December to present awards to winners of the Sheikh Tamim Bin Hamad Al-Thani Anti-Corruption Excellence Award at the International Anti-Corruption day held under the auspices of the United Nations. While in Vienna the emir held talks with the outgoing UN secretary-general Ban Ki-moon in a meeting also attended by the director of the UN Office on Drugs and Crime Yury Fedotov.

Deputy minister for foreign affairs Abdelaziz Bin Abdullah in February attended a White House summit on countering violent extremism. The three-day summit, from 17 February, included ministers from more than 60 countries, and leaders including US President Barack Obama, United Nations secretary-general Ban Ki-moon, French interior minister Bernard Cazeneuve and Jordanian foreign minister Nasser Judeh. Foreign minister Saud Al-Faisal is still not back at work following back surgery in January. On 23 February, foreign ministry undersecretary for multilateral relations Prince Turki Bin Mohammed Bin Saud Al-Kabeer attended a ministerial conference on regional security in Cairo on his behalf.

Michigan-based General Dynamics Land System has been awarded a $187.5m contract to upgrade 44 M1A1 Abrams tanks and 40 M1A2-model Abrams tanks for Saudi Arabia, according to the Pentagon. The company said the new contract would continue work started in 2008 to update the tanks to the M1A2S configuration, which will increase their efficiency and capability. The work will be carried out in Lima, Ohio, with an estimated completion date of March 2015.

Bahrain’s King Hamad Bin Isa Al-Khalifa was in Saudi Arabia on 6 September for talks with King Abdullah and other senior officials, including Crown Prince Salman Bin Abdelaziz. Shortly afterwards, plans were announced for a second bridge between the neighbours, to be called the King Hamad Causeway; the King Fahd Causeway opened in November 1986. A few days later, Eastern Province governor Prince Saud Bin Nayef Bin Abdelaziz received the King Fahd Causeway director-general, Badr Bin Abdullah Al-Atishan.

The blame game began within hours of Sunni extremists taking Mosul (see page 1). Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri Al-Maliki blamed members of the army for deserting, saying the seizure of the city was a “conspiracy”. Saudi Arabia blamed Iranian-backed Maliki, with information minister Abdelaziz Bin Mohieddin Khoja saying: “This would not have arisen were it not for the sectarian and exclusionary policies practised in Iraq over the past years”. Former British prime minister Tony Blair blamed the civil war in Syria (and definitely not the 2003 invasion of Iraq of which he was a primary architect). Writing in The Wall Street Journal on 15 June, L Paul Bremer, the former US governor of Iraq, tried to pin it on US President Barack Obama, who, he said, pulled US forces out of Iraq too soon.

Prince Badr Bin Abdelaziz, a half-brother of King Abdullah, died in late March. He was in his early 80s. He was communications minister in the early 1960s and Saudi Arabian National Guard deputy commander from 1968 to November 2010, when he reportedly retired for health reasons.