Reshaping MENA Region Energy Dynamics
This open access book examines how global energy transitions are transforming MENA economies, development strategies, and geopolitical positioning. As the global energy transition accelerates, it is increasingly shaped by difficult trade-offs between climate ambition, energy security, affordability, and access. Nowhere are these tensions more visible than in the Middle East and North Africa (MENA), a region that remains central to global oil and gas markets and is often portrayed as resistant to change.
This book challenges this perception. As the costs and complexities of the transition become clearer—and as some countries and companies scale back their ambitions—MENA states are intensifying efforts to diversify energy systems, expand clean energy, and reduce emissions from fossil fuels. The policies adopted in the region will not only redefine its own economic and geopolitical future, but also shape the pace and direction of the global energy transition.
Bringing together leading scholars and practitioners, this book examines how global energy transitions are transforming MENA economies, development strategies, and geopolitical positioning, offering timely insights into one of the most consequential regions for the world’s energy future.
Majid Al‑Moneef is the chairman of the Saudi Association for Energy Economics. He previously served as a secretary general of Saudi Arabia’s Supreme Economic Council and as the Kingdom’s Governor to OPEC. His career includes membership in the Consultative Assembly of Saudi Arabia, the Board of Directors of Saudi Aramco, and the presidency of the Saudi Economic Association. He has also been a professor of Economics at King Saud University.
Osamah Al‑Sayegh is a research scientist at the Energy and Building Research Center of the Kuwait Institute for Scientific Research (KISR). He is also a non‑resident fellow at the Center for Energy Studies and the Edward P. Djerejian Center for the Middle East at Rice University’s Baker Institute. Previously, he served as the executive director of KISR’s Energy and Building Research Center, acting executive director of the Environment and Life Sciences Research Center, and technical coordinator for the former Kuwait National Nuclear Energy Committee.
Jim Krane is a fellow in Energy and Geopolitics at Rice University’s Baker Institute. He is the author of Energy Kingdoms: Oil and Political Survival in the Persian Gulf (2019), an award‑winning study of energy consumption in Gulf oil‑exporting states, and City of Gold: Dubai and the Dream of Capitalism (2009), also published as Dubai: The Story of the World’s Fastest City. His work focuses on energy policy, geopolitics, and economic development in the Middle East.
Giacomo Luciani is a professor at the Paris School of International Affairs at Sciences Po. He has previously taught at the Geneva Graduate Institute of International and Development Studies and served as global scholar at Princeton University. His research centers on the political economy of the Middle East and North Africa. His recent edited volumes include Combining Economic and Political Development: The Experience of MENA (Brill, 2017) and When Can Oil Economies Be Deemed Sustainable? (Palgrave, 2020).