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Persuading even vaccinated passengers to take to the skies for long-haul travel will not be easy for an aviation sector that has been hit hard by the Covid-19 crisis. As airlines retrench, led by Etihad, strategies are having to be rethought and consolidation might be unavoidable for an industry that built its extraordinary growth on a global travel boom that has gone into reverse this year.

Following the UAE’s normalisation of relations with Israel announced in mid-August, a growing number of delegations have been travelling between the two countries signing numerous agreements along the way. GSN’s analysis shows that one notable feature of the deal-making has been the activities of businesses connected to the sons of late UAE President Sheikh Zayed Al-Nahyan.

King Salman Bin Abdelaziz on 31 August issued a royal order retiring Joint Forces commander Lieutenant General Prince Fahd Bin Turki Bin Abdelaziz. His son Al-Jouf deputy governor Prince Abdelaziz was also removed from his post.

The UAE’s commitment to broadcasting its now overt relationship with Israel has seen cabinet ministers holding phone calls with their Israeli counterparts, the formal scrapping of the boycott of Israel on 29 August and an El Al plane landing at Abu Dhabi International Airport on 31 August carrying a delegation including US President Donald Trump’s senior advisor and son-in-law Jared Kushner and Israel’s National Security Council leader Meir Ben-Shabbat.

In the wake of Prime Minister Mustafa Al-Kadhimi’s 20 August visit to the United States, wheels are in motion to mobilise a clutch of large energy-focused deals estimated to be worth $8bn struck in meetings with US President Donald Trump and his advisers.

Abu Dhabi National Oil Company (Adnoc) announced on 27 July that it had transferred part of the concession rights for its Lower Zakum and Umm Shaif and Nasr offshore fields from China National Petroleum Corporation (CNPC) to China National Offshore Oil Corporation (CNOOC), marking the first such deal with a dedicated Chinese offshore energy company. 

The government has set itself the challenging target of achieving fiscal stability by 2024, as set out in a new Medium-Term Fiscal Plan for 2020-24, in a further sign of reform momentum under Sultan Haitham.

Mustafa Al-Kadhimi’s government is under extreme economic, as well as political, pressure, led by the demands of maintaining bloated state sector budgets, which are central to Iraq’s political patronage machine; current spending has inflated to some $6bn-7bn/month to keep ministries operating and pay government salaries and pensions. This is far more than revenues will provide, as recognised by a borrowing law which would allow the government to draw $3bn/month from Central Bank of Iraq (CBI) reserves.

QatarEnergy has bought a 30% stake in two offshore blocks in Lebanon in an agreement with France's TotalEnergies and Italian major Eni.

In a pair of royal orders issued early February, Saudi Arabia's King Salman Bin Abdulaziz removed Fahd Bin Abdullah Bin Abdullatif Al-Mubarak from his position as governor of the Saudi Central Bank (Sama), replacing him with Ayman Bin Mohammed Bin Saud Al-Sayari.

An attack by suspected Israeli drones appeared to cause relatively minor damage to a military base in the central city of Isfahan late January. Iranian officials described the facility as a workshop, but did not give further details of its function.

Abu Dhabi International Airport’s new Midfield Terminal is now expected to open in December, some six years later than planned. GSN was told the delay was one reason why the UN’s COP28 climate summit in November would be held in Dubai, rather than Abu Dhabi, while Alpha Dhabi Holding subsidiary Trojan General Contracting completes the work.

The Saudi Fund for Development has agreed to inject $320m into a joint project to build the infrastructure to support a new special economic zone (SEZ) in Oman’s Al-Dhahirah governorate.

Control of the Asir region has fluctuated between different groups over the centuries. By the 1830s, the Al-Ayed dynasty was in control, until the area was captured by the Ottomans in the late 1860s. Saudi Arabia’s founder King Abdelaziz (Ibn Saud) brought Asir under his direct rule in the early 1920s.

A hydrocarbons law in Iraq is in the offing, which could provide a stable revenue-sharing platform for years to come, but big obstacles remain to be resolved, leaving Iraqi Kurds in political and financial limbo, while the Kurdish regional oil industry stutters even as big gas developments are being promoted.