Good morning, wonderful people. If you’ve ever sat on a runway waiting for a slot that never seems to come, you’ll find some of the reasons why in today’s Lede. The Gulf is building airports for hundreds of mns of passengers, but the sky above them is shared. We look at where that airspace gets tight, who pays when it backs up, and the region’s early steps toward managing it as one network.
Speaking of holding patterns: DP World now expects to open its USD 250 mn Jeddah Logistics Park in 1Q 2027, DP World GCC CEO Ahmad Al Hassan said at a roundtable, Seatrade Maritime reports. That’s the third opening date for the 415k sqm warehousing and distribution hub around Jeddah Islamic Port, which was originally slated for 2Q 2025 and later pegged for 2Q 2026. No reason was given for the latest change, and Al Hassan said DP World hasn’t suspended any of its major regional projects during the conflict.
Others are using the wait to go shopping: NMDC Group is weighing three to five acquisition targets to make up for the war-induced slump, and hopes to announce its first takeover in December, NMDC Group CEO Yasser Zaghloul told Bloomberg. The slowdown makes this a good moment for M&A that could boost growth, he said. The Abu Dhabi-based marine and energy services firm is one of Adnoc’s main contractors, and its 9M revenue growth slowed to 4% on Strait of Hormuz disruptions, down from 10% last year and nearly 60% in 2024. Zaghloul expects growth to return to 20% or more once the conflict ends and projects and trade resume.
And it’s Pipeline day: our weekly check on the Gulf’s megaprojects, covering what’s moved, what’s been awarded, and what’s still waiting since last week.
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The Gulf is pouring bns into airports whose usable capacity depends on airspace no single government controls. Governments can approve runways, terminals, aircraft, and airline routes within their own borders, but expanding regional airspace takes coordination across them, Sindy Foster, principal managing partner at Avaero Capital Partners, tells EnterpriseAM.
The pinch points are peak hours and borders: Gulf airspace hasn’t necessarily reached its overall limit, but pressure could build during peak hub traffic, at national boundaries, and along routes with few alternatives, which could leave airports unable to fully use their runway capacity at busy times, Foster says.
Some of that pressure is already here: Gulf airspace is already operating at capacity despite heavy investment in navigation technology, procedures, and traffic management across the UAE, Saudi Arabia, Qatar, and Oman, Wouter Dewulf, professor of air transport management and economics at the University of Antwerp, tells us. Fast airport expansion is widening the gap between traffic volumes and airspace systems that are still largely organized country by country, he adds.
The squeeze is at the borders
The runway is one link in a longer chain: Every flight also needs departure and arrival routes through the airspace around the airport, then en-route corridors that often pass through a neighbor’s control center. Fixed flight paths, restricted flight levels, military airspace, and handovers between neighboring air-traffic-control systems can all cut into an airport’s effective capacity, Dewulf says. The result is a gap between the number of aircraft the runways could handle in theory and the number the wider system can handle reliably.
The chain is tightest where several hubs share it: Those interfaces matter more than any single border or flight corridor, Dewulf tells us. To the east, flights from Dubai, Abu Dhabi, and other UAE airports cross Omani airspace toward India, Pakistan, and wider Asia. To the west and northwest, traffic from hubs in the UAE, Qatar, and Bahrain converges over Saudi airspace, which is also a growing corridor for flights toward Europe, Africa, and the Red Sea, he adds.
Dubai’s move to DWC adds a new link to an already busy stretch: The new airport’s expansion has to be coordinated with existing operations at Dubai International (DXB) during the transition, alongside traffic from Sharjah and Abu Dhabi and aircraft flying through UAE airspace, Dewulf says. “Designing that terminal and en-route airspace will be at least as important as building the runways,” he adds.
SOUND SMART- Terminal airspace is the controlled zone around an airport where aircraft climb out after takeoff and line up to land. En route airspace is the higher network of airways that carries them between regions.
Airlines pay for the gap
Airlines carry the cost, and investors carry the risk to their returns. Longer routings, inefficient handovers, and limits on available flight levels can raise fuel burn, crew costs, and flight times and cut aircraft utilization, Foster says. Airlines may have to build extra time into schedules, which can mean fewer productive flights per aircraft each day. Beyond the occasional delay, airspace inefficiency can weigh on returns from investment in airports, fleets, and route networks, she adds. Those returns depend partly on airspace the investors don’t control.
Gulf hubs make their money in tight connecting waves: Gulf carriers bunch long-haul arrivals and departures into tightly scheduled waves, creating sharp peaks in airspace demand even when daily traffic is manageable, Dewulf says. With less spare capacity at busy times, the system is more exposed to delays, weather, and airspace restrictions, and a five- or 10-minute disruption can ripple through connecting flights into the next departure wave, he adds.
Every reroute lands somewhere
Those ripples can cross borders, and the UAE has rules for when they do. An April aviation circular lets the Emirates Area Control Center temporarily stop departures from specified regional airports when arrival delays at a UAE airport hit 30 minutes and are expected to grow. If a long disruption uses up available holding capacity, controllers can refuse additional aircraft entry to UAE airspace and ask neighboring ATC centers to hold incoming traffic. These are contingency measures, designed for cases where a holdup at one airport spills into airspace across the border.
Wartime diversions tested the network, and neighbors absorbed the load. Egypt’s area control center handled more than double its regular traffic (some 226%) at the peak of the crisis as flights were diverted away from disrupted parts of the Middle East, according to the International Civil Aviation Organization’s (ICAO) June 2026 regional air-navigation report (pdf). ICAO credited coordination between Egypt, neighboring states, and the agency’s regional contingency team with managing those flows safely.
Keeping airspace open didn’t shield Oman from the knock-on effects: Muscat’s flight-information region stayed operational through the crisis, but restrictions and uncertainty in neighboring airspace changed traffic patterns and routing requirements, bringing diversions, airborne holding, extra ATC coordination, and a heavier controller workload. In the UAE, authorities developed alternative routings and used traffic-flow and airspace-slot management to balance demand against available capacity.
Some restrictions are still in place: The European Union Aviation Safety Agency’s (EASA) September and October 2026 advisories still flag risks over Iran, Iraq, Saudi Arabia, and parts of the Gulf, with several bulletins valid until 16 November. They stop short of blanket airspace closures, but they feed into airline routing decisions that sit outside any airport operator’s control.
Alternative routes have their own limits: Controllers across the region have rerouted aircraft through disruptions, but alternative paths can become more congested, less efficient, and more expensive, Richard Maslen, head of analysis at CAPA – Center for Aviation, tells us. “A constraint in one location can push traffic into another already busy corridor, creating a domino effect across the region,” he adds.
Holding up under the next shock takes capacity planned in advance: Neighboring systems need the controller capacity, flight levels, and communications and surveillance infrastructure to take diverted aircraft on top of their normal traffic, Foster says. “The region needs contingency capacity planned as a network, including pre-agreed alternative routes and coordinated flow management, rather than relying on individual neighbouring states to absorb additional traffic at short notice,” she adds.
Toward one Gulf sky
The region has started building a shared regulator: GCC leaders approved a regional civil aviation authority, headquartered in the UAE, in December 2025, a month after officials reviewed an updated study on unified upper airspace across GCC states.
Traffic management could go regional while sovereignty stays national: A working regional framework could let controllers and planners organize traffic around flight flows more than national boundaries, which could improve routing efficiency, sector management, and the ability to respond to demand as it shifts, Maslen says. National sovereignty and military requirements would remain, so integration would improve how available airspace is managed without removing restrictions, he adds.
Abu Dhabi is treating food security as an infrastructure build, and it wants private capital to pay for much of it. The emirate plans to more than double the share of basic food it grows at home while cutting the water its farms use by almost half. That puts greenhouses, smart irrigation, farm solar, and cold chains at the center of the plan. “It’s a very ambitious target,” Leigh Mante, a junior climate and energy fellow at ORF Middle East, tells EnterpriseAM. “At the end of the day, you can’t produce everything within the context of this region. You’ll also still need to import.”
The war exposed how thin the supply chain is:Around 70% of the Gulf’s food imports pass through Hormuz, and the UAE imports 80-90% of its food. Iran, a large supplier to the UAE, banned food and agricultural exports indefinitely. Retailers kept shelves stocked by flying food in and rerouting shipments at a higher cost, and new trucking routes through Oman’s Sohar and Salalah kept cargo moving. Food security climbed the government’s priority list alongside defense and infrastructure.
Emergency fixes came first: In April, ADQ’s Silal expanded its Ensure Essentials program and signed 14 supplier partnerships, and the federal government approved an AED 1 bn fund to localize staples like dairy, poultry, and flour. The crisis “reinvigorated a desire to increase domestic self-sufficiency and domestic production,” Mante says.
The long-term plan sets hard targets for 2040: The Abu Dhabi Agriculture and Food Safety Authority (Adafsa) wants the emirate to produce 70% of its basic food commodities locally, up from 30% today, and to cut farm water use to 12.7k cbm per hectare a year from 24.7k. It also wants agriculture’s contribution to the economy to grow 3.6x to AED 34.6 bn from AED 9.5 bn, according to the strategy unveiled at the Global Food Security Summit last month.
It covers 25 products across six categories: vegetables, fruits, poultry, red meat, dairy, and fish, Zayed Salem Al Kathiri, acting executive director of Adafsa’s strategy and policy sector, tells EnterpriseAM. They were picked for their share of the local diet, their nutritional value, and how realistic local production is. Grains, rice, and edible oils are out.
Water is the hard limit, and farms are the emirate’s biggest drain on groundwater. Agriculture accounts for about 70% of Abu Dhabi’s groundwater use. Desalination supplies only 18% of farm water, and recycled water less than 1%. For decades, the Gulf met water scarcity by building more supply, mostly desalination plants. Adafsa’s target goes after demand instead, by making farms use less. “Just the fact that they’re looking at cutting water use is a good signal,” Mante says.
Red meat and dairy are the hardest items on the list to localize because both need a lot of water. “The UAE imports a lot of beef from Brazil or Australia, and they tend to produce the less water-intensive products in the country, like fruits and vegetables,” Mante says.
Leaning harder on desalination carries its own risk: In April, Iran threatened to hit desalination plants if the US attacked its power plants. A desalination plant in Bahrain had already been hit earlier in the conflict, and a power and water plant in Kuwait was struck days later, though Iran denied responsibility and blamed Israel, we reported at the time.
Fertilizer came through the strait as well: Granular urea prices rose USD 60 per ton after the strait effectively closed, we reported in March. The UAE and Oman are both exploring green ammonia as a local source. “This crisis has reinvigorated those efforts to expand green ammonia production specifically for fertilizer,” Mante says.
Adafsa is counting on private capital for much of the 3.6x growth. Government spending will shift toward productivity gains and measurable results, and two of the strategy’s 13 programs cover redirecting agricultural subsidies and farm financing, Al Kathiri says. Investors are expected to co-invest in greenhouses, smart irrigation, and farm solar; build and run assets from palm replanting to cold chains; and sign guaranteed offtake agreements for dates, fruits, vegetables, and livestock.
The private share of the AED 34.6 bn is still open. Adafsa has started talks with private-sector players, and investment volumes will be set once each program’s public-private partnership (PPP) structure is final, Al Kathiri says.
Money may chase the most visible assets: Investors will likely favor the technologies that are easiest to sell, Mante says, so the priority should be “making sure that they’re not just investing in the flashy technologies, but also in what’s important, like drought-resistant seeds.” Vertical farms suit high-value fruit and vegetables, but “it’s not very cost-efficient to be producing grain in a vertical farm,” she says. Grains could still grow here with crops bred for heat and salty soil, like the higher-yield, drought- and salt-tolerant wheat developed at Sharjah’s wheat farm.
Seed research needs public money first: Trials take years, and “there’s not going to be an immediate return on investment,” Mante says. “That’s why the public sector needs to come in and do the de-risking, so that the private sector can do the rest.” She also points to crop insurance and agri-guarantees for smallholder farmers, and to shared food hubs that pool research, water, and energy infrastructure.
Even at 70%, Abu Dhabi will still import, so trade routes matter as much as farms. Diversified trading partners and backup routes are “equally as important” as domestic output, Mante tells us. The UAE’s comprehensive economic partnership agreements (CEPAs) could cut delays through faster customs clearance and single-window systems, which matters more when rerouted perishables spend longer in transit, she says.
The supplier list is getting longer: The UAE has a food partnership with India and Africa and is building closer ties with Brazil. “There are partners that they wouldn’t have normally considered before that they’re starting to consider more now,” Mante says.
What’s next: Adafsa’s program-by-program PPP structures will be the first test of how much private money commits and which assets it lands in. Water policy is also on the calendar. GCC states restarted talks on intra-regional water cooperation in August, Mante says, and the UAE co-hosts the UN Water Conference with Senegal at Adnec in Abu Dhabi on 8-10 December, where she expects regional cooperation to come up.
Higher freight rates and cargo rerouted around Hormuz lifted AD Ports Group’s 3Q net income 64% y-o-y to AED 975 mn, which the company calls a record quarter, according to its financials (pdf). The Group’s revenues climbed 48% to around AED 8 bn.
Shipping and logistics did the heavy lifting: Maritime and shipping revenue rose 56% to AED 4.74 bn on added capacity and higher rates across feeder, Ro-Ro, and tanker operations. Average feeder rates rose 73% y-o-y, while feeder volumes held flat at 900k TEUs. Logistics revenue rose 76% to AED 1.96 bn, driven largely by the UAE land bridge, and air freight forwarding revenue jumped 161%.
UAE port volumes are still less than half of last year’s: UAE container throughput fell 57% y-o-y to 751k TEUs, and bulk and general cargo fell 54% to 4.5 mn tons. Both rebounded from 2Q, with containers up more than 30% and bulk up 48%, as AD Ports moved cargo and feeder services to Fujairah Terminals and Khorfakkan Port, outside Hormuz. Ports cluster revenue still rose 12% to AED 798 mn, helped by higher UAE port leasing income and international container operations.
9M net income rose 64% to AED 2.5 bn. Revenue climbed 41% to AED 20.8 bn. Maritime and shipping led, up 52% to AED 11.7 bn. Economic cities and freezones rose 73% to AED 2.9 bn, and logistics 35% to AED 4.5 bn, while ports revenue fell 3% to AED 2.1 bn.
Higher fuel prices and operating restrictions cut Jazeera Airways’ 3Q net income 47.4% y-o-y to KWD 7.1 mn, while revenue fell 10.6% to KWD 62.1 mn, according to its financial release (pdf). Excluding KWD 1.4 mn in pre-operating payroll for its in-house ground handling, licensed in October, net income would have fallen 37% to KWD 8.5 mn, the company said in a statement. Jazeera expects regional developments, fuel prices, and operating restrictions to keep weighing on results.
Fuel cost more while the airline flew less: Average fuel prices rose 55% to USD 139 a barrel from USD 90, pushing the fuel bill up 28% to KWD 19.3 mn despite 18% fewer block hours. Passengers fell 26.3% to 1.07 mn, and the load factor slipped to 74.9% from 78.0%. Limited airport operating hours until 20 September and the continued suspension of connecting traffic through Terminal 5 constrained the network.
Ancillary sales made up part of the gap: Ancillary revenue rose 83% y-o-y to KWD 17.4 mn in 3Q, while passenger revenue fell 26% to KWD 43.6 mn, by our math. Jazeera says ancillary revenue per passenger almost tripled to KWD 15.6, and its market share at Kuwait International Airport rose to 36.7% from 31%.
9M net income fell 32% despite higher revenue: Net income fell to KWD 15.7 mn over the nine months as revenue rose 3.7% to KWD 177.9 mn. The period included the 57-day closure of Kuwait International Airport, when Jazeera moved its base to Saudi Arabia.
Debt more than doubled this year. Term loans from local banks reached KWD 133 mn at the end of September, up from KWD 55 mn at the end of 2025, after Jazeera drew KWD 94 mn and repaid KWD 16 mn over the nine months.
Lease of life
A larger leasing portfolio and higher aircraft-sale gains lifted Dubai Aerospace Enterprise’s (DAE) 3Q net income 6.8% y-o-y to USD 135 mn, according to its financials (pdf). The rise followed a roughly 57% drop in 1H net income, by our math. Total revenue, including other income, rose 33.8% to USD 581 mn. Macquarie AirFinance (MAF), which DAE took over on 28 July, contributed USD 184.9 mn in revenue and USD 25.4 mn in net income through the end of September. Gains on aircraft disposals rose to USD 63.1 mn from USD 51 mn.
A bigger fleet brought bigger costs: Depreciation and amortization jumped 54.8% to USD 264.7 mn in 3Q, and finance expenses rose 35.5% to USD 189 mn. Together, those increases absorbed most of the quarter’s revenue gain, by our math.
Lower ins. recoveries cut 9M net income by 43%. Net income fell to USD 323.2 mn over the nine months, mainly because ins. recoveries dropped to USD 10 mn from USD 312.2 mn a year earlier. Total revenue rose 13.2% to USD 1.4 bn, with net lease revenue up 21.8% to USD 1.3 bn.
Engineering revenue halved: DAE’s engineering maintenance revenue fell 51% to USD 76.2 mn over the nine months. Customers couldn’t bring aircraft in for scheduled maintenance, and labor revenue fell because of the regional geopolitical situation, the company says.
DAE’s fleet has grown by almost half this year: It completed its takeover of MAF in July at an enterprise value of around USD 9 bn. Its owned, managed, and committed fleet reached 983 aircraft at the end of September, up from 678 at the end of 2025. That’s a 45% rise, by our math. MAF followed DAE’s USD 2 bn takeover of Nordic Aviation Capital in May 2025. DAE has also launched Equator with Blackstone Credit & Ins. in April, targeting around USD 1.6 bn in annual deployments. In July, it added Mustang Aerospace with Neuberger Specialty Finance, targeting c. USD 6 bn of aircraft-leasing investments over the medium term.
Paper losses
Unrealized investment losses and a higher tax bill cut Agility Global’s 3Q net income 30.2% y-o-y to USD 47.7 mn even as revenue rose 22% to USD 1.6 bn, according to its financial release (pdf). EBITDA slipped 3% to USD 208 mn, the company said in a press release.
Three items below the operating line turned against it. Agility booked a USD 3.9 mn unrealized loss on financial assets, against a USD 21.6 mn gain a year earlier. Its tax bill more than doubled to USD 24.4 mn from USD 11.7 mn, and finance costs rose to USD 68.7 mn from USD 62 mn.
Aviation and fuel logistics drove revenue: Menzies Aviation’s revenue rose 22% to USD 974 mn on new stations, and contract gains in ground handling, cargo, and fueling, plus its acquisition of G2 Secure Staff. Contract exits and station closures, including the end of its operations in Kuwait, partly offset that growth. Ground handling turns still rose 7%, and cargo volumes 13%. Tristar’s revenue rose 24% to USD 419 mn. Agility Logistics Parks’ revenue jumped 49% to USD 21 mn as new Saudi facilities began generating income and occupancy rose in Africa.
9M net income held roughly flat: Net income edged up 1.2% to USD 145.2 mn over the nine months, while revenue climbed 24% to USD 4.5 bn. Menzies revenue rose 29% to USD 2.7 bn, Tristar’s 18% to USD 1.2 bn, and Agility Logistics Parks’ 46% to USD 62 mn. The board approved a USD 75 mn interim dividend.
Tristar is on its way out: Agility agreed in October to sell its 65.12% stake in Tristar to India’s Aegis Logistics for up to USD 581 mn, valuing the business at USD 1.5 bn including debt. Agility will receive USD 425 mn on completion, USD 110 mn a year later, and up to USD 46 mn in contingent payments. The sale is expected to close by the end of March 2027, subject to regulatory approvals. The board will evaluate how to split the proceeds between growth investment, debt reduction, and shareholder returns.
Emirates is buying six Airbus A380s it currently leases from Qatar’s Lesha Bank. The bank is selling the superjumbos through its Lesha Aviation Fund, according to a press release. Ownership of two has already transferred, and the other four will follow in stages as their leases expire, the last by April 2028. The transaction value wasn’t disclosed.
Emirates is keeping its older widebodies flying longer. The airline is extending the life of its existing widebody fleet as Boeing 777X delays continue. Emirates now expects only three to five 777Xs in late 2027, with potentially another 10 arriving in 2028, against a total order of 270 aircraft.
Emirates is also exploring other ways to finance its fleet: The airline has secured a 12-year shariah-compliant French leasing arrangement with Dubai Islamic Bank and Natixis CIB to finance two Airbus A350-900 aircraft this year, adding another financing structure to its fleet investment strategy.
QatarEnergy has lost its first long-term LNG contract to the war. Poland’s Orlen has terminated one of its two long-term LNG supply agreements with QatarEnergy “due to an ongoing force majeure resulting in an inability to meet contractual delivery obligations,” according to a regulatory announcement. The agreement covered 1 mn tons of LNG a year, valued at about EUR 570 mn in 2026, and was due to run until 2034. It stays in force for 60 days after the termination notice. This is the first known termination of a long-term QatarEnergy contract since the war disrupted Qatari exports, Reuters reports.
Orlen had expected deliveries to restart this month: It said in October that it expected Qatari LNG to resume in mid-November. QatarEnergy declared force majeure in March, after attacks on Ras Laffan and as tanker traffic through Hormuz was severely disrupted. The attacks damaged two production trains, taking 12.8 mn tons of annual capacity offline for three to five years.
The canceled contract was priced off oil: It was signed in 2009, and market participants estimate its price at around 16% of Brent, Reuters reports. That’s about USD 15.5/mmBtu at current Brent prices, by our math. Analysts estimate long-term US LNG contracts at around USD 6-7/mmBtu. Orlen will keep taking cargoes under its second QatarEnergy contract, for up to 1 mn tons a year through 2034, which is priced off gas benchmarks.
QatarEnergy can’t swap in its US cargoes: It is buying US LNG as it works around the disruption. But its current contracts require the LNG to come from Qatar, so it can’t automatically substitute US cargoes, according to MEES managing editor Jamie Ingram. As those contracts expire, buyers might renegotiate for more flexible sourcing terms, he told us.
Murban markdown
Adnoc has slashed the premium on its December Murban official selling price by more than 60%, to USD 4 per barrel over the Dubai benchmark, Bloomberg reports, citing traders. Adnoc also trimmed prices for its other main grades. The Murban cut is steeper than Aramco’s last week, when it lowered its December Arab Light price for Asia by USD 2 a barrel.
Prices are falling as supply recovers: Recovering Middle East exports are adding to downward pressure on prices, along with signs the conflict is moving toward de-escalation, Bloomberg reports. Brent fell below USD 90 a barrel on Tuesday for the first time since August, after US President Donald Trump signaled he is pursuing a diplomatic resolution.
#1- Adnoc looks for tankers: The company is in talks with US officials about licenses to buy or lease sanctioned tankers, alongside Trafigura, Vitol, and Mercuria, as a shortage of vessels pushes freight rates to records and oil to around USD 100 a barrel. The Trump administration is reviewing roughly 50 applications out of about 1.6k sanctioned ships.
#2- New Delhi in Fujairah: India is exploring holding part of its strategic petroleum reserve in Fujairah, where tankers can load outside Hormuz. The UAE is India’s fourth-largest crude supplier and its second-largest for LNG and LPG, according to India’s Foreign Ministry.
#3- Fertilizers in containers: AD Ports Group and Fertiglobe signed an MoU at Adipec to explore containerized transport and warehousing for Fertiglobe, which bills itself as the world’s largest seaborne exporter of urea and net ammonia combined.
#4- QatarEnergy is buying into Namibia: The company has agreed to buy a 25% interest in Namibia’s offshore Petroleum Exploration License 0082 (PEL82) from Chevron Namibia Exploration II, a Chevron subsidiary. The companies didn’t disclose the price, and the agreement still needs regulatory approval.
OPEN + PENDING
#1- Bahrain’s LNG imports restart: Bahrain could resume LNG imports next year at levels close to the eight cargoes it took in 2025, as industry recovers from war-related disruption. The Kingdom has received just one LNG cargo in 2026, with no more expected before year-end, after the March attacks and trade restrictions disrupted industrial operations and cut gas demand. A return to last year’s levels depends on the pace of the industrial recovery.
#2- Terminal groundwork: Tenders are out for infrastructure works at King Salman International Airport. King Salman International Airport Development Company (KSIADC), the Riyadh giga-airport’s developer, has tendered the roads, bridges, and utility networks for Zone C1+C2 — the civil infrastructure underpinning the new Terminal 6 and its links to the existing Terminals 1-5. The tender went out on 26 October, with bids due 6 December.
DEALS + LAUNCHES
#1- GCC railway moves: GCC transport ministers signed the legal framework for the GCC Railway Project. The agreement organizes rail transport across member states and supports a single interoperable network. The planned 2.1k-km railway would connect Kuwait, Saudi Arabia, Bahrain, Qatar, the UAE, and Oman, giving freight a rail route between ports on both sides of Hormuz.
#2- XRG first sale: Abu-Dhabi’s Adnoc has signed a 10-year sales and purchase agreement (SPA) with India’s Gujarat Energy to supply up to 4 mn tons of LNG starting in 2028. That’s an average of 400k tons annually, by our math.
#3- Borrowing power for chips: Saudi Arabia’s National Infrastructure Fund (Infra) has signed two financing facilities worth SAR 2.5 bn (USD 667 mn) with the AI company. SAR 1.4 bn will fund substations, transmission infrastructure, and grid connections designed to support up to 1 GW of future data center capacity. The remaining SAR 1.1 bn or so will finance GPUs for about 25 MW of IT load.
#4- Gulftainer acquires trucks: UAE ports and logistics operator Gulftainer has signed an agreement with United Al Saqer Heavy Equipment to acquire 1k trucks and develop a 100k sqm automotive logistics park in Al Dhaid. The first 450 trucks are expected before the end of November and the remaining 550 in 1Q 2027.
#5- Land for cars: Sohar Freezone has signed six land-lease agreements covering more than USD 163 mn in planned investment across about 440k sqm. The largest is a USD 100 mn automotive and advanced-industries park that EW Partners will set up on 317k sqm, with a first phase of around 180k sqm of manufacturing plants, workshops, and warehouses.
#6- Lending then flying: The Saudi Fund for Development has signed six concessional loans worth more than USD 403 mn with Syria’s finance ministry, with Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman and Syrian President Ahmed Al Sharaa present at the signing. The loans cover energy, water, health, housing, infrastructure, and digital government.
#7- Adnoc Drilling heads offshore in Kuwait: The company has secured letters of award from Kuwait Oil Company for two offshore jack-up rigs, worth a combined maximum of KWD 96.6 mn (c. USD 313.6 mn) over a four-year firm term. It’s Adnoc Drilling’s first offshore rig operation outside the UAE. It plans to deploy one of its own jack-ups and bareboat-charter the second. Work starts in 4Q 2027, with the first full-year contribution landing in 2028.
#8- SLB will drill Sharjah’s next gas phases: Sharjah National Oil Corporation (Snoc) has awarded SLB an expanded framework agreement for underbalanced coiled tubing drilling at its Moveyeid gas storage field and Hedebah gas field. The campaign starts in 2027 and is roughly twice the size of SLB’s first one at Moveyeid in 2024, which Snoc says exceeded its drilling and production targets.
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