Saudi Arabia’s AI build starts with data center capacity

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WHAT WE’RE TRACKING TODAY

TODAY: KSA’s data center build picks up pace at Leap + Kipco’s JTC Logistics stake moves to Napesco

Good morning, friends. The war is back in the headlines, but it’s not the only thing moving this morning.

The US launched a barrage of airstrikes on Iran yesterday, attacking Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps targets. The strikes — which focused on air defense and radar systems alongside minelaying and communications capabilities — were in retaliation for Tehran’s attempt to lay mines in Hormuz, US President Donald Trump said on Truth Social.

Tehran’s response? Iranian parliament speaker Mohammad Bagher Ghalibaf warned that US attacks could lead to a blockade on all oil exports through the critical waterway, while Iran’s military threatened to inflict high costs on US forces in the region.

Meanwhile, Riyadh is building the physical stack underneath its AI ambition. A cluster of agreements timed to this week’s Leap conference spans new data centers, cloud regions from AWS and Microsoft, and even a self-driving trucking partnership with Humain.

The EnterpriseAM Egypt Forum is back — and we’re devoting the full day to the singular set of questions on everyone’s mind: What does AI actually mean for your company, your people, your economy, your own job — and your kids’ future?

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Algeria gets closer to the European gas race

Algeria could help Germany close its gas storage gap. German Foreign Minister Johann Wadephul described Algeria as a “reliable partner,” though no supply volumes or agreement were disclosed, Reuters reports. Berlin’s storage sat at 52% in late August, against a 1 October deadline of 80% that it’s currently on track to miss.

REMEMBER- We called Algeria North Africa’s near-term leader in the race to backfill Europe’s gas back in April — Egypt still has more flexibility as a liquefaction hub, and Morocco’s play remains years out.

State producer Sonatrach already runs two pipelines into Europe — one to Italy, one to Spain — with 43 bcm of combined annual capacity. Algeria supplied about 20 bcm to Italy last year, or 30% of Italian consumption, while Spain is looking to squeeze another 10% out of the Medgaz pipeline. Germany has no direct pipeline link of its own — it would need Algerian gas as LNG through its own regasification terminals, or indirectly through the European pipeline network.

Ruwais is back online

Abu Dhabi National Oil Company (Adnoc) has fully resumed production at Ruwais, the UAE’s largest refinery, months after a drone strike forced operations to halt, Bloomberg reports, citing sources familiar with the matter. The 922k bbl / d facility has been running at full capacity for about a month, while exports of diesel, jet fuel, and naphtha have recovered to around 70% of pre-war levels.

BACKGROUND- The refinery was shut after an Iranian drone strike caused a fire back in March, after already running at reduced rates as Strait of Hormuz traffic constraints disrupted supplies. Ruwais is a major exporter of refined products, including diesel to Europe, making its return more significant as global product markets remain tight.

Market watch

Oil prices rose this morning as US-Iran strikes heightened supply disruption risks,

Reuters reports. Brent crude futures increased around 0.75 to USD 95.40 / bbl by 03.45 GMT, while West Texas Intermediate (WTI) gained USD 0.44 to USD 90.66 / bbl.

The Baltic Index dips once again: The Baltic Exchange’s dry bulk index — which tracks rates for the capesize, panamax, and supramax vessel segments — fell 0.9% to 3,157 points on Tuesday. The capesize index declined 2.1% to 5,221 points, while the panamax increased by 1.9% to 2,360 points. The smaller supramax inched up 0.2% to 1,650 points.

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Leap’s first two days bring in a string of data center agreements

Saudi Arabia is building out the infrastructure needed to turn its AI ambitions into a functioning industrial stack. A string of agreements announced around this week’s Leap conference spans capacity, connectivity, computing, and AI applications, as the Kingdom moves to build the physical backbone for an AI economy.

The build starts with data center capacity: Humain and digital infrastructure firm DataVolt have started construction on 100 MW of an AI-ready data center at Oxagon, Neom’s industrial city on the Red Sea coast, according to a statement. The capacity forms part of DataVolt’s 360 MW first phase within a planned 1.5 GW AI data center campus, with the first 100 MW expected to come online in 2028.

There’s more: Al Moammar Information Systems said it will spend USD 1.2 bn expanding its data centers to 192 MW of total capacity; NHC Innovation will invest USD 880 mn in data centers at Khuzam Digital Valley, targeting 65 MW by 2033; and Zain KSA signed a non-binding MoU with DataVolt to explore building data centers in the Kingdom, capacity it would share with government, enterprise, and cloud providers.

The infrastructure to deliver it is coming next: Amazon Web Services (AWS) is targeting a December launch of its Saudi cloud region and has committed up to 50 MW to the Humain AI Zone by 2028, according to a statement. AWS announced back in 2024 that it woul launch a “hyper-scale” cloud region in Saudi Arabia by 2026 as part of a USD 5.3 bn investment ticket. Microsoft plans to open its own Saudi cloud region in November.

And the AI is starting to leave the data center: Humain is partnering with US autonomous-vehicle software company Applied Intuition to deploy thousands of self-driving trucks across Saudi logistics corridors by 2030, Bloomberg reports. Autonomous trucks can use those models and AI buildouts across logistics corridors, while the same infrastructure could eventually support ports, industrial sites, and other assets that need continuous AI processing.

Moving AI into freight exposes a different infrastructure gap: Scaling autonomous freight requires infrastructure well beyond the compute itself, Jesse Marks, founder and CEO of Rihla Research and Advisory tells EnterpriseAM, including consistently mapped roads, reliable connectivity along major corridors, and road networks with sufficiently predictable conditions for autonomous systems to operate safely, he adds.

But more infrastructure does not automatically mean more resilience. The Gulf got a warning in March, when outages at AWS infrastructure in Dubai spread beyond a single data-center failure while a separate power outage hit capacity in Bahrain, disrupting businesses and pushing some workloads onto infrastructure in other jurisdictions.

What’s next? That resilience depends on having “adequate power supplies, fiber routes, and operational systems to sustain the model. If dispersed across geography, this reduces the likelihood that a single disruption or even an Iranian strike could knock the entire system offline during a period of conflict. It, however, may require a more decentralized operating system of power, cables, and cooling to keep centers up and running. That could get expensive,” Marks notes.

Kipco moves 36.3% of JTC Logistics to Napesco

Kipco is reshuffling its ownership of JTC Logistics: Kuwait Projects Company Holding (Kipco) has agreed to sell a 36.3% stake in JTC Logistics Transportation & Stevedoring to its 53.9%-owned subsidiary National Petroleum Services Company (Napesco) for KWD 30 mn, according to a disclosure (pdf) on Boursa Kuwait.

What is moving onto Napesco’s books? JTC operates across port management, contract logistics, warehousing, equipment leasing, and power rental. It generated KWD 14.5 mn in operating revenue and KWD 3.1 mn in net income in 1H 2026, according to its financials (pdf).

IN CONTEXT- Napesco already owned part of JTC before this agreement. In 2024, the company held 21.2% of JTC and accounted for it as an associate, according to its 2024 annual report (pdf). That means the KWD 30 mn purchase is not Napesco entering JTC for the first time — the subsidiary is materially increasing an existing investment, while keeping the asset inside the wider Kipco group.

How is Napesco funding the move? Napesco’s board approved KWD 10 mn in banknote financing alongside KWD 30 mn in credit facilities from a local Islamic bank. The financing package will partly fund the investment, with the remainder supporting the company’s operations. The firm said the financial impact will only show once the transaction is completed and the financing agreements are signed.

DP World kicks off four-ship methanol rollout

DP World adds methanol to its shipping mix

DP World’s feeder business has its first methanol-burning ship running European routes — with three sister vessels still to come. DP World London, a 1.2k-TEU methanol dual-fuel container ship, has been serving DP World’s feeder arm Shipping Solutions’ North Europe routes since its April delivery and took its first methanol bunkering in Rotterdam on 25 June, according to a press release. The ship is owned by Germany’s Elbdeich Reederei and operated by Shipping Solutions — previously known as Unifeeder.

It’s one of four, not a one-off: Two methanol dual-fuel feeders were ordered in October 2023 and two more in February 2024, with the final two, including the DP World London, chartered one each from Elbdeich Reederei and MPC Container Ships for 2026 delivery. The dual-fuel design lets it run on conventional fuel wherever methanol isn’t available yet, useful at feeder scale where methanol bunkering barely exists.

Russia has nearly doubled its sanctioned LNG tanker fleet in under a year to keep gas flowing to China

Russia has nearly doubled its sanctioned LNG tanker fleet in under a year, building the ships needed to keep gas flowing to China. Washington has largely stayed silent — even as Beijing’s appetite for Russian fuel grows. Moscow’s fleet of tankers serving the sanctioned Arctic LNG 2 project grew to at least 20 ships from 11 in under nine months, according to Bloomberg ship-tracking analysis. Most of the vessels carry the opaque ownership structures typical of “dark fleet” ships — the same evasion playbook already familiar from Russian crude.

Why it matters: Arctic LNG 2 has one buyer for its sanctioned cargo — China — and the fleet buildout is the constraint standing between Moscow and a bigger slice of that market. Rystad Energy has raised its 2026 production estimate for the plant by about 9% to 5 mn tonnes on the back of the added ships, though that’s still well short of the facility’s combined 13.2 mtpa capacity across two production trains. A third train is being assembled. For a project the West has tried to shut down at the export stage, added shipping capacity is the difference between a stranded asset and a functioning revenue line for Moscow.

The bottleneck is ice, not buyers: Arctic LNG 2 sits in western Siberia, where the fuel first has to move on specially built icebreaking tankers before transferring to conventional vessels for the long haul to China. Three of the heavy-duty Arc7 ice-class ships are now running; Moscow expects a fourth Arc7 by year-end. Rystad Energy’s Daria Melnik called shipping capacity the “principal constraint,” and Vortexa’s Ashley Sherman said four Arc7 vessels could get both trains to near-full output — but only if transshipment in Russian waters scales alongside. Russia is also running 12 conventional carriers for the winter route, when the Arctic passage freezes over; Rystad estimates the plant needs up to 30 conventional vessels to hit full capacity.

The ships are only half the story: Washington hasn’t sanctioned China’s purchases of the blacklisted fuel or moved against the expanding fleet — a reversal from the previous administration, which had targeted Arctic LNG 2 itself along with its vessels and storage. Xi and Putin met Monday on the sidelines of the Shanghai Cooperation Organization summit in Kyrgyzstan, where gas ties were reportedly on the Russian side’s agenda.

OUR TAKE- Sanctions were supposed to remove Russian gas from the market altogether; instead, Moscow has absorbed the cost of evasion and kept the cargoes moving. For Gulf LNG strategy, the takeaway is less that Russian volumes are material on their own than that a sanctioned competitor is quietly expanding in the very market Gulf producers are paying hefty premiums to lock down.

Calendar

SEPTEMBER

16-17 September (Wednesday-Thursday): Saudi Maritime & Logistics Congress, Dammam, Saudi Arabia.

22-23 September (Tuesday-Wednesday): Breakbulk Americas, Houston, US.

22-24 September (Tuesday-Thursday): Seamless Middle East, Dubai, UAE.

28-30 September (Monday-Wednesday): Transport Logistics Middle East, Riyadh, Saudi Arabia.

OCTOBER

12-14 October (Monday-Wednesday): The Airport Show, Dubai, UAE.

20-22 October (Tuesday-Thursday): TOC Americas, Cartagena, Colombia.

21-22 October (Wednesday-Thursday): Global Ports Forum, Singapore.

26-29 (Monday-Thursday): Air Cargo Forum, Miami, US.

27-29 October (Tuesday-Thursday): Routes World, Riyadh, Saudi Arabia.

NOVEMBER

2-5 November (Monday-Thursday): ADIPEC Maritime and Logistics Exhibition and Conference, Abu Dhabi, UAE.

10-11 November (Tuesday-Wednesday): TOC Asia, Singapore.

10-12 November (Tuesday-Thursday): Intermodal Europe, Rotterdam, Netherlands.

11-13 November (Wednesday-Friday): Logitrans, Istanbul, Turkey.

18-19 November (Wednesday-Thursday): Breakbulk Asia, Singapore.

FEBRUARY 2027

10-12 February (Wednesday-Friday): Routes Americas, San Juan, Puerto Rico.

MARCH 2027

16-18 March (Tuesday-Thursday): CMA Shipping, Houston, US.

16-18 March (Tuesday-Thursday): Routes Asia, New Delhi, India.

APRIL 2027

20-22 April (Tuesday-Thursday): Routes Europe, Antalya, Turkey.

26-29 April (Monday-Thursday): Transport logistic and air cargo Europe, Munich, Germany.

26-29 April (Monday-Thursday): Saudi Smart Logistics, Riyadh, Saudi Arabia.

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