The current completion rate of the project has reached 46%. (Image source: WAM)

As part of ongoing efforts to enhance infrastructure in the Emirate of Sharjah, the Sharjah Electricity, Water and Gas Authority (SEWA) has launched the first phase of the natural gas network connection project in Al Dhaid City.

According to SEWA, the current completion rate of the project has reached 46%, with phase one scheduled for completion in the first quarter of 2026.

The work is progressing according to the approved timeline, demonstrating SEWA’s commitment to delivering critical infrastructure efficiently and on schedule.

Engineer Ibrahim Al Balgouni, director of the Natural Gas Department at SEWA, confirmed that this phase involves the extension of a natural gas pipeline to the Jabal Omar and Tal Al Zafran neighbourhoods.

The total length of the network being laid is 83 km, with an overall investment of approximately US$3.81mn (AED14mn).

Once complete, the project will provide gas services to nearly 989 residents in the area.

Al Balgouni noted that this development marks a significant step towards building a modern and sustainable energy network throughout Sharjah.

The project is part of a broader strategy to reduce reliance on traditional gas cylinders by offering a safer, more economical, and environmentally friendly alternative.

By expanding the natural gas network, SEWA is helping to boost living standards while supporting residential, commercial and industrial growth in Al Dhaid.

The initiative is also in line with Sharjah’s broader goals of achieving comprehensive urban development and enhancing community wellbeing.

The organisation added that its focus on high safety standards and advanced infrastructure ensures that the gas networks not only meet current needs but are future-ready.

Connecting Al Dhaid to the natural gas grid is expected to drive economic activity, reduce household energy costs, and contribute to the city's transformation into a more efficient and sustainable urban environment.

SEWA continues to play a vital role in supporting the emirate’s long-term development plans through strategic investments in essential utility services, the organisation said in a press statement.

It added that this initiative follows the directives of His Highness Sheikh Dr. Sultan bin Mohamed Al Qasimi, Supreme Council Member and Ruler of Sharjah, and aligns with the emirate’s vision for sustainable development and improved quality of life.

The collaboration AD Ports Group’s commitment to expanding its integrated ports, maritime, logistics, and industrial footprint in Egypt. (Image source: AD Ports)

AD Ports Group, Egypt's Ministry of Petroleum & Mineral Resources and Dubai-based TCM Project management, have signed an agreement to explore joint operation and development of Egypt’s strategic crude oil storage network, in a move set to strengthen UAE/Egypt ties and boost Egypt's energy infrastructure

The planned collaboration aligns with AD Ports Group’s commitment to international expansion and diversification, and developing its integrated ports, maritime, logistics, and industrial footprint in Egypt, one of its largest overseas markets, where it has announced approximately US$469mn in investment commitments since 2022.

The potential partnership aims to unlock new efficiencies and value creation opportunities by integrating AD Ports Group’s world-class operational expertise and digital capabilities with Egypt’s established energy infrastructure. Egypt’s crude oil storage facilities are strategically positioned to serve domestic and international markets, and to play a pivotal role in regional energy security, supply chain resilience, and the facilitation of international crude oil trade flows.

H.E. Eng. Karim Badawi, the Minister of Petroleum & Mineral Resources for the Arab Republic of Egypt said, “We are pleased to sign a Memorandum of Understanding with both AD Ports Group, one of our most important partners in trade and infrastructure, and TCM, to explore opportunities to maximise the value of Egypt’s advanced petroleum sector assets, particularly the strategic crude oil storage facilities, as well as to identify other areas of mutual interest.” He added that the partnership would maximise the added value of Egypt’s petroleum sector assets and enhance regional cooperation with the UAE, with which Egypt enjoys strong ties throughout the energy value chain.

Captain Mohamed Juma Al Shamisi, managing director and group CEO, AD Ports Group, said: “This Memorandum of Understanding highlight our Group’s strategic interest in Egypt, a nation with which the United Arab Emirates enjoys deep and enduring ties. The potential joint operation and development of Egypt’s extensive crude oil storage network reflects our commitment to bringing the full strength of AD Ports Group’s integrated business model—spanning ports, maritime, logistics, economic zones, and digital solutions—through forging long-term strategic partnerships, supporting the economic and industrial objectives of the Egyptian government.”

In another significant move in its global expansion strategy, AD Ports has inaugurated its first international office in China, which will lead and coordinate the Group’s commercial and investment activities across the country and the broader Asia region.

The industry must continue to take a proactive and agile approach to talent readiness. (Image source: Adobe Stock)

Alex Spencer, chief operating officer, OPITO, looks at how we can ensure the creation of a workforce that is skilled and prepared for the energy transition

2030 is the year Saudi Arabia is aiming for 50% of its electricity to come from renewable sources, and by when the UAE plans to triple its share of renewable energy, while increasing installed clean energy capacity in the total energy mix to 30% – to name only a few ambitions in the region. In this process of transitioning to more sustainable forms of energy, tens, even hundreds, of thousands, of energy jobs are to be created and adapted. In just a few months, we’ll need to have secured the fresh talent pipeline that will play a large part in making 2030 possible.

As university degrees take roughly 34 months and most courses only enrol every September, we have just a few months to attract students to a career in energy infrastructure, so that they can apply for the September 2026 intake. For those interested in an apprenticeship, we have a little more time.

The need for a STEM degree, and for specialist qualifications or certifications, was highlighted as a key barrier to working in the energy industry, according to OPITO’s report: My Energy Future. However, respondents were equally encouraged by the industry’s potential to offer good pay, career development opportunities, and job security. Over the coming months, these are the factors that we should highlight with enthusiasm to secure that fresh influx of talent.

Once we get this right, we will have solved one of two pressing workforce challenges. However, not only do we need this increase in people, but these people need to be readily up to the task ahead. Here lies the industry’s next challenge – the readiness gap.

Is the workforce ready?

Fast forward to 2030, let’s imagine we’ve succeeded in creating a workforce with the right foundational skills. How prepared are they to step into these emerging energy roles? Whether it’s the need for more on-the-job experience or for the right set of qualifications to step onto the job site safely to begin with, this is the energy industry’s readiness gap.

Of course, we expect that many of the new jobs that are to be created will be filled by oil and gas workers. Often their skills could meet up to 80% of the new brief whatever part of the energy industry they step into. But it’s that final 20% – that final push to readiness – that is so often overlooked when we talk about the skills gap.

Part of the challenge is that the diversification of industry means there are many different and new job roles to consider – and this differs for every country in the Middle East region at different stages in their energy transition journey. From solar and green hydrogen scale up to the new demands of data centres and the intersection of AI across industry, how do we build a workforce that is ready and mobile across the region with the capability to flex their expertise to meet evolving needs?

Enhancing workforce readiness

One relatively straightforward answer to this conundrum is to establish industry standards that ensure employees and contractors can always work safely and competently, regardless of the type of energy infrastructure they are assigned to.

Whether you’re maintaining a motor on an offshore oil platform or at the top of an offshore wind turbine, many of the safety requirements and electromechanical skills are the same if not similar. Products that were first developed for oil and gas – helideck operation, emergency response, confined spaces, rigging and lifting, working at height, safety induction etc. – are all transferable to emerging technologies such as green hydrogen, carbon capture, and many more.

One of the ways we’re addressing the readiness gap at OPITO is by developing introductory courses on business sustainability, carbon capture, and hydrogen aimed at technical apprentices. Learners gain an understanding in the role of hydrogen and carbon capture in supporting the transition to clean energy, the technology’s characteristics and categories, and the required health, safety, and regulatory frameworks for working with them.

Increasing the fidelity and flexibility of training

With little time left on the clock, we are working closely with industry stakeholders including developers, operators, regulators, and contractors to establish training and assessment frameworks for emerging energy transition technologies. This is complimented by a global network of industry forums where we regularly receive feedback on how the skills and readiness gap is evolving.

For instance, one interesting development that has come out of those conversations is how core safety training like the International Minimum Industry Safety Training (IMIST) standard can be delivered in a way that better reflects regional needs in the Middle East. IMIST introduces new entrants to key safety concepts and encourages a strong sense of personal responsibility, something increasingly important as diverse mixes of project teams come together for complex operations. Because the programme has been designed to be flexible, employers are exploring how to tailor it to local operating conditions by embedding it into their own in-house training, helping ensure teams are equipped to manage risks specific to their environments.

As with the skills gap, the readiness gap looks different in each region, so while global standards are necessary, so too is the need for flexibility to meet individual country and company needs. In the Middle East, the development focus is on ensuring the workforce is trained to the minimum safety standard, while investigating region specific requirements such as safe driving on the worksite.

For example, OPITO advanced on its safe driving at work standard to develop desert-specific standards for both light and heavy vehicles.

Safe, skilled and ready for the task ahead

Addressing the workforce skills gap is a major energy industry priority to 2030, but we only have a few months left to influence the size and shape of the talent pipeline. To ensure that the pipeline is ready to make an impact from day one, the industry must continue to take a proactive and agile approach to talent readiness. While there are still many unknowns, global standards that can be adapted to address regional priorities will ensure that our future workforce not only has the knowledge and expertise – but are also competent, confident, and safe in its real-life application.

Kazakhstan is phasing out its policy of subsidising gas prices.

Kazakhstan is changing the rules of the game for investors and its own future

Kazakhstan, one of the key energy producers in Central Asia, is initiating a difficult but strategically necessary phasing out of the long-standing policy of deep subsidisation of domestic gas prices. The reason is simple: the policy under which the country has been among the three world leaders with the cheapest fuel for the end user for decades has created fundamental economic distortions and systemic risks.

As a result, an acute energy paradox has emerged: having significant proven reserves of hydrocarbons and being an exporter of them, Kazakhstan is facing the growing risk of domestic shortages, faced with the progressive problems of its production infrastructure. The current reforms represent an attempt to carry out a complete reversal of the economic model of the industry, aimed at increasing its investment attractiveness and long-term sustainability.

Understanding the imbalance: an unsustainable model and its global context

Kazakhstan's gas industry has been based on an unsustainable economic model for years. Government regulation required gas processing plants to sell liquefied petroleum gas and petroleum products on the domestic market at prices that were significantly lower than the operating cost.

According to industry experts and relevant departments, with the cost of producing a ton of LPG at US$128-147, the regulated wholesale price was artificially fixed at US$82-96. Moreover, the official forecasts of the Ministry of Energy of Kazakhstan clearly illustrate the scale of the problem: for example, for 2025-2026, the estimated cost of marketable gas for Almaty and the Almaty region is US$98 per thousand cubic metres, while the wholesale price approved by mid-2025 for the same regions is almost twice as low. This approach automatically generated direct losses for each producer, making the core activity inherently loss-making and completely depriving it of incentives for development.

The industry, in fact, functioned as a hidden mechanism for nationwide subsidies, where losses from domestic sales were forcibly compensated by export earnings from other, more marginal petroleum products. Such a price disparity positioned Kazakhstan as a unique anomaly on the global energy map.

According to the latest data at the end of 2024, while the global average price of natural gas for the population was set at 0.086 US$ per kWh (a unit of energy used for correct international comparison), in Kazakhstan it remained in the group of the lowest in the world.

The abnormal availability of gas was high not only in absolute terms, but also in relative terms: in terms of the ratio of gas costs to average wages, according to research, Kazakhstan held a leading position in Europe, allowing residents to purchase up to 10,000 cubic metres of gas per year on an average income, which is an unattainable indicator for the vast majority of countries in the world. The situation reached the point of absurdity when a litre of LPG, a complex and energy-intensive product, cost consumers less than a litre of bottled drinking water.

Inevitable consequences: overconsumption, asset depreciation, and shadow market

The policy of affordability directly stimulated the formation of a culture of overconsumption, which led to a rapid increase in the burden on the entire gas system of the country. Statistics for 2024 eloquently confirm the trend: domestic consumption of commercial gas increased by 9% and reached 21.2bn m3, while consumption of liquefied petroleum gas increased by 5.6%, amounting to 2.42mn tons. Such steady growth, unsupported by corresponding increases in production capacity, is the root cause of the impending shortage.

At the same time, chronic underfunding caused by the loss of domestic sales led to critical physical deterioration of production assets. Official statistics, which record more than 400 unscheduled shutdowns at the three largest refineries in three years, indicate systemic risks. At such key facilities as KazGPP, 98% of high-pressure vessels have been in operation for more than 40 years.These facts indicate that the industry has reached the limit of its operational reliability.

In addition, the huge price difference between Kazakhstan and its neighbours has given rise to a thriving black market and illegal exports. Price arbitrage in the autogas market was particularly revealing: with a price in Kazakhstan of about US$ 0.21 per litre, in neighbouring Russia it was US$0.36. Kazakhstan, in fact, inadvertently subsidised consumers in neighbouring countries, exacerbating the shortage of supplies within the country.

Strategic response: a large-scale resource base expansion programme

The current reforms are part of a conscious transition to a sustainable and investment-attractive model. As a central element of the reforms, the Government has developed a multi-year roadmap providing for a phased but decisive increase in prices to economically reasonable levels by 2028.

Although such measures are painful for consumers, they serve as a powerful positive signal for investors and the industry as a whole, guaranteeing future profitability and predictability of work in the sector.

The central element of the new strategy is a large-scale programme to expand the resource base and processing capacities. The goal is to increase the production of commercial gas from the current 23bn cubic metres to 31bn cubic metres by 2030.

To achieve this goal, work is underway in several areas. In the field of production, the Anabai, Vostochny Urikhtau and Rozhkovskoye fields were commissioned by the end of 2023. In the period 2025-2026, the Zapadnaya Prorva, Tsentralny Urikhtau and Barkhannaya fields with total recoverable reserves of over 50bn cubic metres are expected to be launched.

A portfolio of capital-intensive projects is being implemented in the processing sector. The key is the construction of a new gas processing plant in Atyrau region, which will work on raw materials from the Kashagan field. The first stage of the project has a capacity of 1bn m3/year, which will be followed by the implementation of a second, larger installation with a capacity of 2.5bn cubic metres per year by 2030. Analysts consider the involvement of a reputable Qatari investor, UCC Holding, in the implementation of these projects as a powerful vote of confidence in Kazakhstan's reforms and investment climate.

At the same time, projects are underway to build a new gas processing plant in Zhanaozen with a capacity of 900mn cubic metres per year, and negotiations are underway to build a high-tech plant at the Karachaganak field with a potential capacity of 4bn cubic metres per year.

In addition to the construction of new plants, the programme includes other strategic projects. Among them are the environmental modernisation of the country's largest metropolis through the conversion of the Almaty CHPP to gas, the development of gasification in the northern and eastern regions to create new sales markets, as well as the expansion of the gas transportation system, including the construction of the second line of the key Beineu—Bozoi-Shymkent main gas pipeline. Work on the latter has already begun in April 2025, and the project itself will increase the pipeline's capacity to 15bn cubic metres per year, which is a prerequisite for sustainable gas supply to the country and transit to other regions.

Along with the development of production, the country's transit potential is also strengthening, which is confirmed by an increase in gas transit in 2024 by almost 10% to 69.6bn cubic metres. Against the background of the transformation of the energy balance in Central Asia, where neighbouring Uzbekistan has turned from an exporter into an importer, Kazakhstan is strengthening its status as a key transit hub, including for Russian gas supplies to the region.

Long-term vision and legislative support

The strategic goal of the reforms goes far beyond the stabilisation of the fuel market, as the main vector is aimed at the development of deep processing and the creation of a domestic gas chemical industry. The legislative framework is being improved to achieve these goals. In order to stimulate new production, an improved formula for the purchase price of gas from subsurface users was introduced in 2023, which has already been used by five companies ready to start commercial production in 2025. To create a culture of energy conservation and demand management, the Parliament has initiated a draft law “On Lean Gas Consumption”, which provides for the introduction of mechanisms for end-user responsibility, including digitalisation of accounting and the use of increasing coefficients for excess consumption. At the same time, a Roadmap has been adopted for the development of the gas engine fuel market, which creates projected domestic demand through the renovation of bus fleets and the expansion of the network of gas filling compressor stations.

Maturity test: the balance between the market and the new social contract

The implementation of such large-scale reforms is a serious test of the maturity of the economic system and society as a whole.

At the same time, by pursuing a market policy, the state strives to preserve the key elements of the social contract. This is confirmed by the digital project launched in 2024 to provide gas vouchers (discounts) for socially vulnerable segments of the population.

At the same time, the continuation of gasification programmes is indicative, which cover even small and remote villages where the construction of infrastructure is impractical from a purely commercial perspective. Thus, as of January 1, 2025, the country's overall gasification level reached 62.4%, providing 12.6mn people with access to gas. With almost 100% coverage of the western regions and large cities, the state is steadily moving into the centre of the country and setting a long-term goal to provide up to 90% of the population with gas in technically accessible areas by 2040.

This approach demonstrates that for the state, gasification is not only a commercial project, but also a tool for improving the quality of life and developing regions, which is a key factor in ensuring social stability during a difficult but necessary transition period.