Research Library

The Arab Gulf is protecting its own interests by pushing to keep fossil fuels in the mix. But more crucially, its agenda is in line with the world’s economic growth and development goals, writes Osamah Alsayegh.

Earlier this year, the Middle East Energy Roundtable brought together industry leaders and experts to discuss the trends shaping the Gulf’s energy transition politics. The Baker Institute’s Osamah Alsayegh, Kristian Coates Ulrichsen, Jim Krane and Ana Martín Gil summarize the key findings in this report.

Visiting scholar Osamah Alsayegh explores the water and energy challenges of GCC states and offers three key policy recommendations that could help to build the region’s resilience and sustainability.

This paper models the oil strategy of Gulf Arab states under three future energy transition scenarios. Under the most ambitious scenario, the region would have to decouple its oil revenues from its economic growth and could face significant economic and political consequences.

This paper lays out one potential step-by-step path toward decarbonizing Saudi Arabia, imagining a sweeping restructuring of a fossil fuel-driven society and economy.

How durable is the Saudi-Russian relationship, and what are its implications for the longstanding energy-for-security arrangement between Saudi Arabia and the U.S.?

Although Mexican President Andrés Manuel López Obrador is confident that measures implemented in the first half of his tenure will help Mexico to achieve energy self-sufficiency, his optimism must be weighed against the evidence, writes nonresident scholar Adrian Duhalt. In this brief, Duhalt explains the flaws in López Obrador’s plan and why Mexico is unlikely to achieve energy self-sufficiency anytime soon.

Although once known for its robust urea and ammonia production capabilities, Mexico found itself particularly vulnerable to soaring international fertilizer prices in 2021. With the global circumstances surrounding the spike in prices likely to linger through 2022, and Mexico's state-owned infrastructure still hampered by technical issues, the impact could be borne all the way to dinner tables in the form of higher nutrient prices for local farmers and food inflation.

The authors take a realistic look at what's needed for the global energy transition to succeed and warn that moving away from fossil fuels too quickly could backfire — stranding climate progress in the so-called “valley of death.”