Good morning, ladies and gentlemen. The new month opens with Oracle expanding its data center network in the Kingdom as AI demand grows, though it’s keeping the locations under wraps. That caution comes as Houthi attacks on Saudi Arabia escalate and Gulf leaders push for de-escalation to avert a renewed regional conflict.
On the oil front, Saudi Arabia and its Opec+ partners agreed in principle to keep December output targets steady at today’s meeting. Bigger moves will wait until a year-end capacity review sets the 2027 baselines.
Elsewhere, Acwa Power is making its first big move into the US through a joint venture with EIG. At home, a new debt enforcement law makes dues faster to collect and harder to dodge, while bank lending to public-sector enterprises jumped 21.5% y-o-y to SAR 285.1 bn in September, nearly triple the growth in total credit.
Hush-hush data centers
Oracle is expanding its data center network in the Kingdom as AI uptake accelerates, Cormac Watters, Oracle’s executive VP of applications for EMEA, told The National. The US multinational tech giant’s expansion plan in the Gulf also includes the UAE. Watters also sees prospects in Qatar, Kuwait, and Syria.
Interestingly, the Middle East is the “fastest-growing part” of Oracle’s wider Europe, Middle East, and Africa region. In Saudi Arabia, Oracle has deployed cloud infrastructure regions in Jeddah and Riyadh to support business operations in line with Saudi Vision 2030.
Geopolitics makes Watters reluctant to disclose the locations of Oracle’s data centers in Saudi Arabia. “We don’t want any bad actors to somehow figure it out,” he said. His caution is understandable: an Amazon Web Services (AWS) data center in the UAE and a cloud computing facility in Bahrain were struck earlier this year during a regional conflict in the Middle East. The Bahrain site took more damage than its regional infrastructure was built to handle, AWS said. In the UAE, it has yet to regain access to the data and resources housed in the facility, though it has helped clients get back up and running elsewhere.
The risks are also reshaping client conversations. Everyone now starts with sovereignty, Watters said — where their data will be stored and who holds “the big kill switch.” Routine purchases are on hold, though strategic transformation projects are moving ahead. Some clients are even asking about what Watters called a “digital embassy” — a sovereign cloud that can be moved to another country if its site is threatened while staying under home-country control. That’s already doable, especially for global players like Oracle.
War Watch
The Houthis are escalating attacks on Saudi infrastructure as mediators work to head off a new US-Iran war. The group claimed six new operations on Thursday, including missile strikes on the Ras Tanura and Rabigh refineries and Aramco’s Abqaiq facility, and a missile salvo on Riyadh’s King Khalid International Airport. It also said a drone strike on Dammam’s King Fahd International Airport disrupted air traffic, and that an attack on the headquarters of Saudi mobilized forces in Najran caused casualties.
Saudi launches strikes of its own, Houthis say: Houthi spokesman Yahya Saree said on Friday that Saudi warplanes carried out 93 airstrikes and missile attacks in the past 24 hours, targeting what he called civilian assets in Sanaa, Al Jawf, Taiz, Saada, Marib, Dhamar, Hajjah, Ibb, and Lahj. That brings the total number of Saudi strikes to nearly 3.7k since the escalation began, he said.
Saudi Arabia is blaming the Houthis for attacks on holy cities. The Saudi-led coalition also said it intercepted multiple drones and missiles over Medina and Makkah, as well as Riyadh (in two separate incidents) and the southern, eastern and western regions. The Houthis, however, denied targeting Medina, calling the claims “great lies” that “no one believes anymore,” and saying their operations target Saudi oil facilities and military bases.
Gulf leaders are calling for de-escalation, both publicly and privately, The Washington Post reported, amid separate reports that the US is planning a brief but forceful military operation against Iran after the 3 November midterm elections. A Qatari delegation reportedly visited Tehran on Friday as part of mediation efforts, while the UAE urged all sides to “exercise wisdom and pursue political solutions to contain tensions.” Oman, meanwhile, called on Gulf countries to form a security pact with Iran and Iraq, warning of the “terrible cost” of excluding Tehran.
ICYMI- A Turkish parliamentary committee approved the defense agreement committing Turkey, Pakistan — which is “cautiously optimistic” about its mediation between Iran and the United States — and Saudi Arabia to treat an armed attack on any of them as an attack on all three as part of the Makkah Joint Defense Agreement signed last August. That comes after Egypt agreed to authorize the “necessary measures” to support the Kingdom.
Keep it steady
Saudi Arabia and other Opec+ countries agreed in principle to keep December oil output targets steady at today’s meeting, Reuters reports, citing three unnamed sources. This is in line with expectations that further policy changes will wait until next year. Before setting the 2027 baselines, Opec+ first has to complete a review of how much oil each member can produce, the sources say. That review, due by year-end, will determine members’ future quotas and how the group phases out its remaining cuts of about 2 mn bbl / d.
GCC exports are recovering, but output is still below quota: GCC countries have been boosting exports, yet most are pumping well under their targets. The regional disruption pushed Gulf producers below their quotas even after Opec+ completed the phased rollback of a 1.65 mn bbl / d supply cut. Regional exports averaged 17.3 mn bbl / d in October, up from 16.4 mn bbl / d in September and 16.9 mn bbl / d in the two months before the war.
Data point
6 mn bbl / d — those were Saudi Arabia’s average crude exports in October, the highest monthly average since the Iran war broke out in late February and up 5.5% from September’s 5.69 mn bbl / d, according to Asharq Business calculations. Meanwhile, Kpler puts September exports at 7.1 mn bbl / d and October at 5.9 mn bbl / d, based on preliminary figures, while Vortexa sees exports holding steady at 6.5-6.6 mn bbl / d in both months.
REMEMBER- Saudi exports have swung sharply this year. They fell to about 2.45 mn bbl / d in August, Kpler data showed, before a drone strike took the East-West pipeline offline in September. The pipeline has since recovered to 5.8 mn bbl / d of its 7 mn bbl / d capacity.
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The big story abroad
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