Good morning, friends. We’re about to slide into a long weekend across most of the region in celebration of Prophet Muhammad’s birthday. EnterpriseAM MENA+ will also be off on Friday, and we’ll be back in your inboxes at the usual time on Monday.
The trade file is back on the front pages of the global business press, and this time it’s not-so-friendly fire. Canada slapped retaliatory tariffs of up to 50% on USD 20 bn worth of US goods, targeting steel, dairy, and agricultural equipment and matching Washington’s rates line for line. They take effect 8 September, leaving a fortnight for posturing, carve-outs, and at least one all-caps Truth Social post.
Closer to home: Civil nuclear cooperation between Saudi Arabia and the US is moving forward, with President Donald Trump submitting an accord to Congress for review, the Wall Street Journal reports, citing an unnamed government official. Trump reportedly maintained his last-minute condition requiring Riyadh to normalize relations with Israel. Riyadh and Washington signed the 30-year agreement last month, ostensibly paving the Kingdom's way to enriching uranium on its soil — despite Trump later signaling that there would be no enrichment.
AND- The Kurdish-led Syrian Democratic Forces have been dissolved as their fighters integrate into the Syrian military, the group’s leader Mazloum Abdi said. With US backing, the group helped combat the Islamic State and previously controlled parts of the country. The move signals a key breakthrough in President Ahmed Al Sharaa’s efforts to unite Syria’s factions.
Meanwhile in the tech world: Anthropic is expected to inform investors that its total addressable market exceeds USD 30 tn, surpassing the USD 28.5 tn projection set by Elon Musk’s rocketmaker. The methodology, as far as anyone can tell: add up everything an AI model could conceivably do, then assume you win all of it. Somewhere in San Francisco there is a very tired associate who built that model, and somewhere in Hawthorne there is another one being told to go find another USD 2 tn. We are all in the business of telling stories about the future. Some of us just get better multiples for it. –Salma
Syria is getting its first superapps, even as most people in the country still can’t get a bank card.My Syria and Labby announced funding rounds days apart in late July — one of them being the first investment into a Syrian tech startup — in the hope that the metaphorical plane will be built fast enough while they fly. The superapps — single mobile platforms that integrate multiple distinct services like payments, transport, booking, and e-commerce into one seamless ecosystem — received the funding to launch locally.
The two investments came to a market that’s still quite nascent, with Syria recording fewer than 10 funding deals so far in 2026, according to Magnitt’s coverage. “Syria currently has a number of deals that is comparable to the smaller markets in the region. We’re speaking of countries like Lebanon — those relatively smaller Levant countries that were there earlier, but with a smaller scale of activity,” Farah El Nahlawi, research manager at Magnitt tells EnterpriseAM.
For more startups to emerge and develop, Syria’s infrastructure development needs to keep pace. “We view infrastructure as the essential first step toward enabling a successful startup ecosystem in Syria,” Abdel Hameed Arwani, Partner at Shorooq tells EnterpriseAM. “Looking at Syria’s macroeconomic needs, the country requires financial sector modernization, telecom and IT upgrades, and real estate redevelopment.”
That makes My Syria and Labby early arrivals as the top of a stack whose lower layers are still being built.
What’s being built
Labby was founded in 2024 by Mohammad Fawaz and it wasannouncedlate July that it secured USD 10 mn from a group of undisclosed Saudi and UAE investors. Labby also operates as a super app bundling services like ride-hailing, food delivery, e-commerce, digital payments and other on-demand offerings in a single platform.
The investment was a seed round by label, but not by size. USD 10 mn “is closer in the range of a series A investment when compared to local and regional figures,” Nahlawi tells us. The backers are most likely angel or family investors who may or may not be named at a later point, she adds.
My Syria was launched by121 Living, a UAE-based startup founded by Syrian entrepreneurs Rami Kaiem, Feras Kaiem, Waseem Qudmani, and Kinan Madi. Established in 2007, 121 Living works across hospitality and e-commerce with a focus on property management and short-term rentals. The launch is funded by private individual investment from the four co-founders.
The idea came out of a booking that wouldn’t go through. “The idea started with everything happening in Syria — a lot of visitors are coming now, and Syria is entering a new era with the removal of sanctions. On my first visit back, I was trying to book a hotel, and it was very complicated because of sanctions, lack of payments, and communication difficulties. Syria was really offline, except for two or three sectors,” Rami Kaiem, co-founder of My Syria and UAE-based 121 Living, tells EnterpriseAM.
Built as a digital gateway and marketplace, My Syria is focused on tourism for now, with six services covering visitor needs: Booking a hotel apartment, an airport taxi, a rental car, or a restaurant. It serves Damascus only, hosting around 45 restaurants, 20 hotels, two holiday-home buildings, and three car rental companies, according to Kaiem. The app, supported by the Tourism Ministry, has been downloaded 15k times since its 29 July, with services rolling out every 1-2 two weeks. The plan is to expand to other cities beyond Damascus — primarily Aleppo then Latakia, Tartus or Homs, and to include other services such as public or government services.
The timing of the launch comes with a real tourism recovery. Syria drew 3.52 mn visitors in 1H 2026, up 111% y-o-y, with Arab travelers doubling. Returning Syrian expats remain the single largest bloc at 2.13 mn, up 75%.
What moved investors off the sidelines
Investors have been watching Syria since last year. Some are now starting to make their move. “The indicators that moved us from exploration to commitment were the relief of sanctions, international engagement, and regional power diplomacy with the Syrian government. Sanctions were the fundamental factor that prompted our move,” Arwani tells us.
Economic sanctions on Syria were lifted last year, removing the major obstacle to foreign investor access to the economy. The US has also moved to delist Syria as a State Sponsor of Terrorism, a potentially positive signal for business, though Syria remains on the FATF gray list and is due for another review in October. Syria has also begun reintegrating into the international financial system, starting with regaining SWIFT access.
AND- Syria was officiallyremoved from the US’ list of state sponsors of terrorismthis week, removing a hurdle that has been described as one of the remaining structural obstacles to capital flows into the country’s reconstruction economy. The decision also revoked the Specially Designated Global Terrorist (SDGT) status of Hay’at Tahrir Al Sham’s, the anti-Assad Islamist militant group that the current Syrian President Ahmed Al Sharaa led for about a decade.
But don’t hold your breath just yet: The de-listing removes one “of the excuses” that prevented companies from dealing with Syria, but it still doesn’t address the most important blockers for investment flows: Banking connectivity and compliance, regulatory predictability, and infrastructure, we reported last month when the US announced the delisting plan. Syria was on the SST list long before 2011, and international players still wired money in and invested in the country. What broke under Bashar Al Assad in the post-2011 era was connectivity to the international banking system — and this is what the Syrian government is actively working on fixing now.
Still, the infrastructure isn’t there
What hasn’t come yet is the consumer payment layer the superapps are built on. Syrians still can’t issue Visa or Mastercard. “Most platforms — like Pyypl or similar super apps offering global payment methods — target Syrians coming from abroad who already have a Visa or Mastercard and do not want to hold cash in Syria or are used to a specific financial system,” Syrian web3 expert Mohamad Soud tells EnterpriseAM. Visa and Mastercard POS terminals turn up occasionally in five-star hotels and specific venues, but remain largely the preserve of visitors rather than local Syrians.
New and existing fintechs are dealing with this challenge by attempting to bridge the gaps traditional banks have left, and Arwani argues they are more than a stopgap. “Over time, these fintech platforms will develop into comprehensive solutions that complement and support the broader banking system. It’s a core component of building structural solutions for the current environment — everyone is placing building blocks to grow the overall system, not temporary fixes to be torn down later,” he tells us.
The regulatory piece moved last week. The Central Bank of Syria issued a decree establishing a framework for licensing payment service providers and operators. It introduces a regulatory sandbox to test financial products before public launch and lays the technical and legal groundwork for eventual integration with regional and international payment systems — the first formal answer to the problem Soud describes. It also arrived considerably faster than most of the experts we spoke with expected.
More is needed. “Regulatory updates are crucial,” Arwani says, “The convening of the new parliament should pave the way for refining existing regulations and issuing new frameworks to support the ecosystem.”
Where the money is actually going
Shorooq’s own capital isn’t headed for consumer apps. After more than a year of assessment, it’s focusing on telecom / IT, financial infrastructure, and real estate — three sectors that map directly onto the macro gaps Arwani lays out. Specific deals are expected to be announced soon, he tells us.
Who’s writing cheques in the meantime is a narrow group. “Broadly speaking, it’s diaspora money — high-net-worth individuals and investors — plus Gulf institutions and family offices,” Arwanis tells us. For a smaller ecosystem like Syria, big investors and institutional VCs will take longer to enter the market as they require multiple rounds of due diligence before they commit, Nahlawi says.
The talent question
The third input is people, and that’s being organized largely from outside the country.SYNC, a nonprofit founded after the regime change by Syrians in the diaspora, connects tech professionals in Silicon Valley with their peers in Syria and aims to facilitate 25k jobs over five years through networking events, training, and mentorship programs for women entrepreneurs. Its first event, held in February in Damascus, drew more than 1,200 participants, well above expectations. The next iteration, scheduled for 9-10 October with over 3k people from 25 countries expected to attend, will bring together investors, founders, corporates, students, academics, and government.
“We have such an intelligent young workforce. They don't need a handout; they need a hand up. They just need an opportunity, and I think SYNC represented that opportunity. They were finally open to the rest of the world,” co-founder Muyesser Taqqi-Eddin tells us.
What could still go wrong
The case against moving now is mostly a list of things that haven’t happened yet. Syria remains on the FATF gray list with a review due in October. An unfavorable outcome would complicate exactly the correspondent banking and payment integrations the central bank decree is designed to enable. The card issuance problem the superapps were built to route around is unsolved, which leaves consumer platforms dependent on infrastructure nobody has finished building. And Labby's backers are undisclosed, limiting what can be said about how durable that capital is or whether it follows on.
Arwani’s own timeline is the clearest caution in the story: Institutional VC is 1-2 years out. On that read, July's two deals are not the start of a funding wave so much as the earliest movers arriving ahead of one.
The conflict-driven exodus of families and teachers from UAE schools that many feared last spring hasn’t materialized at the scale anyone was budgeting for, GEMS Education, Taaleem, and Nord Anglia — which together run dozens of the country's biggest premium and mid-market schools — tell our UAE desk. Retention is broadly flat y-o-y, teacher attrition is running below multi-year norms at all three groups, and the harder-hit segments — boarding and early years — have bounced back.
By the numbers: GEMS retention held at around 85%, CEO Dino Varkey tells us. Taaleem’s premium schools added around 4k students after accounting for the usual 10% annual churn, per CEO Alan Williamson. Nord Anglia says more than 90% of students have returned, with its biggest school — Nord Anglia School Dubai — full again for September on the back of a fast-moving waitlist. GEMS operates 45 UAE schools, while DFM-listed Taaleem runs 14 premium schools and 34 government-partnership schools. Nord Anglia has four, split between Dubai and Abu Dhabi.
The rebound extended to the segments that had been flagged as most exposed. Nord Anglia hit its broader target at its Swiss International Scientific School Dubai — one of only two boarding offerings in the country — after going into the year expecting half as many, Regional Managing Director Elizabeth Lamb tells us. The same applies for nurseries — Taaleem’s Kids First Group nurseries, which lost around AED 30 mn in net income at the peak of the disruption, are now forecasting AED 120 mn-range net income. That is short of the AED 150-160 mn original target, but a long way from the loss-making scenario Williamson says management had feared.
Teacher retention is the more striking data point. GEMS reported 16-17% turnover — its lowest in a decade, against a 25% international-schools norm — alongside an employee net promoter score of 54. Taaleem lost 9% of staff against a UAE-wide 20% average, of which only 1 percentage point was tied directly to conflict-related departures. Nord Anglia is starting the year fully staffed across its UAE schools, though Lamb noted some newer and younger teachers chose not to return after the initial missile activity.
Everyone we spoke to agreed that the solid retention rates are a testament to how much less transient the UAE has become as a destination for expats. Lamb attributes this to lifestyle perks and career progression prospects, while both Varkey and Williamson point to the booming property market as something that has helped anchor people in the UAE in a way that wasn’t as common a decade ago. GEMS’ data backs the same shift from a different angle: average student tenure across its portfolio has risen from 2.7 years to almost six.
Some headwinds remain: Dubai’s Knowledge and Human Development Authority froze private school fees for FY 2026/27 after last year’s up-to-2.35% increase, squeezing margins on rising teacher wages and materials costs. “That puts some pressure on the business because we’re having to deliver the same high quality at last year’s costs,” Lamb explains. Some expansions also were impacted — Nord Anglia has deferred several FY 2028 projects to 2029 on supply-chain disruptions, and GEMS lost a couple of months of construction but still expects projects more or less on time.
What’s next: The enrollment cycle runs through end-September, and a second wave of families is still holding out. “Even now, I think some families are still thinking, ‘let's give it one more week and just check everything remains quiet,’” Lamb says. Around 1% of GEMS’ student base had indicated they were relocating home; 30-40% of those have already come back or signalled they will, Varkey says. The operators are more or less confident the next school year will be one of growth, but agree it won’t be at the high margins seen over the past few years.
France has become the latest sovereign to line state-backed export credit behind its own contractors as they compete for Saudi contracting and supply work. As part of Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman’s Paris visit that produced 21 Saudi-French agreements at the start of the week, three agreements will see Bpifrance back financing tranches worth c. USD 13 bn. That makes it one of the biggest single export credit agency-backed packages in a field that already includes the US, the UK, and Italy.
The comparative picture: PIF signed an MoU with the US Export-Import Bank (US EXIM) in July, establishing a framework for up to USD 15 bn in long-term financing for PIF portfolio companies to procure US-sourced goods and services. This followed a reins. framework signed between US EXIM and Saudi EXIM for US capital-goods exports in April. Last October, the PIF signed a separate MoU with UK Export Finance (UKEF) that put GBP 4-5 bn (c. USD 6.8 bn) of risk appetite behind British suppliers going to Saudi. Earlier in 2025, Italy’s SACE backed EUR 3 bn of NEOM financing after a visit from Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni.
Now, it’s France’s turn. Bpifrance Assurance Export is stepping in to derisk and fund French operators in the Kingdom:
The Finance Ministry and Bpifrance are setting up an initial USD 5 bn credit line to finance and refinance contracts executed by French companies in Saudi Arabia;
A separate roughly USD 5 bn package is envisioned for the National Debt Management Center to fund Riyadh Metro work, the Sharaan Hotel at AlUla, and rolling stock for Expo 2030 and the 2034 World Cup;
Saudi Energy secured a USD 3 bn financing framework with Bpifrance, coordinated by BNP Paribas and HSBC, to develop its electricity grid.
The corporate deal flow that came in parallel:
Energy: Aramco signed USD 3.7 bn in procurement agreements with French oilfield services firms SLB and Vallourec;
Transport: Alstom won a EUR 500 mn contract for Riyadh Metro Lines 3 and 6, while CMA CGM and Red Sea Gateway Terminal agreed to a EUR 434 mn investment to develop Terminal 4 at Jeddah Islamic Port;
Tech: French AI firm Mistral and PIF-owned Humain struck a strategic cooperation framework to jointly develop and commercialise AI models.
Capital is flowing the other way, too. Saudi entertainment group Qiddiya will invest EUR 6 bn (c. USD 7 bn) in three amusement parks near Cergy-Pontoise, northwest of Paris, including a Dragon Ball Z manga-themed park. The project is expected to create 22k jobs in the Paris area, and stems from a shared interest in manga discovered in a 2025 meeting between MbS and Macron.
The two nations are also coordinating on regional economic architecture, launching a joint Saudi-Syrian-French business council to drive investment in Syria, positioning the country as a trade bridge connecting Europe, the Gulf, and Asia.
What's next? France is already the fourth-largest source of FDI into Saudi Arabia, with EUR 16.3 bn deployed in 2024. As the state-backed credit lines activate, expect French contractors, defence firms, and tech players to scale their footprints in the Kingdom — and Saudi capital to increasingly target European leisure and real estate assets.
Kuwait is moving to set up specialized commercial chambers inside its existing court system, in a bid to create a better legal environment for investors. Cabinet approved a decree-law last week, introducing specialized economic circuits inside the Court of First Instance, Court of Appeal, and Court of Cassation — carving out exclusive jurisdiction over financial markets, banking, competition, trademarks, and major commercial contracts, Arab Times reports.
The pitch is speed and predictability. Most circuits across the courts will have three judges presiding, with Courts of First Instances making final decisions on claims under KWD 10k and courts of appeal and cessation taking on more complex cases and claims of over KWD 30k. The law also introduces one-judge circuits to make decisions on urgent matters and petitions.
The problem being solved? Dead capital. “The reform responds to the economic cost of delay and uncertainty in commercial litigation, not the direct cost of going to court,” Dr. Bashayer Almajed, senior counsel at Al Tamimi & Company and one of the lawyers who worked on the legislation, tells EnterpriseAM. A disputed receivable sitting unresolved keeps capital out of circulation and diverts management time, she adds. Uncertainty over enforcement becomes, in her words, “part of the risk of doing business” for companies operating in Kuwait.
That’s why the legislation goes well beyond creating another court. Almajed says the drafters built the reform around the full life cycle of a commercial dispute: An early settlement mechanism, a case-preparation office to get filings ready before judicial time is spent on them, specialist adjudication, electronic procedures, and — the piece she flagged as most important — a dedicated execution structure for enforcement.
“Take a routine payment dispute: Under the current system, a straightforward claim can stall for months on incomplete documents or expert reports, and even a winning party then has to fight a separate battle to actually collect. The new structure is designed to intervene at each of those points, rather than simply giving judges a shorter clock to work against,” she explains.
Foreign investors get one explicit hook: Cross-border enforcement. The new courts will enforce judgments issued by foreign courts, Justice Minister Nasser Al Sumait said — a direct answer to a standing complaint about cross-border enforcement inconsistency.
What’s next: The Justice Ministry has until 1 October 2027 to issue executive regulations, and existing commercial disputes will run under the old system until then. Almajed says the reform’s real test will be in implementation, not the decree-law’s text.
“Businesses ultimately do not measure the effectiveness of a justice system by the date printed on a judgment. They measure it by when that judgment produces a real-world result,” she says. Almajed sees expert evidence and the electronic-filing infrastructure as the two components most likely to become the new bottleneck if they aren’t built out with the same care as the court structure itself.
Rabigh Refining and Petrochemical appointed Hassan bin Hamad Al Yami as president and CEO, effective 1 September, according to a Tadawul disclosure. He succeeds Othman bin Ali Al Ghamdi, who will step down for personal reasons but remain on the company’s board. Al Yami has over 30 years of refining and petrochemical experience, having served as vice president of Aramco’s Ras Tanura refinery and in other senior roles at Aramco affiliates in Saudi Arabia and overseas.
Gulf paper may have gotten more expensive to issue this year, but the buy side has yet to blink. Fitch has Abu Dhabi’s 10-year sovereign notes at nearly double the premium over US Treasuries it did in January, and corporate spreads are wider now than they were in March. But when the books open, it’s clear that demand is available at almost any spread, with Saudi Real Estate Refinance Company and an Indian bank’s Dubai branch each seeing their debt issuances oversubscribed multiple times over.
Over on the equity side in Saudi Arabia, it’s becoming clear that the constraint was never price — it’s a foreign ownership cap that has yet to be taken down, and will be top of mind for the country’s new capital markets chief.
Saudi Arabia has a new chairman of its Capital Market Authority (CMA), and the market has already decided what it means.Mazen Al Sudairi — a former Al Rajhi Capital research chief who had been advising the cabinet — took over as Saudi Arabia’s new capital markets chief on 13 August, replacing Mohammed ElKuwaiz after nine years in the job, according to a Royal Order carried by the Saudi Press Agency. Bankers and investors are reading the swap the same way: Al Sudairi is the one who could move the reforms ElKuwaiz never got to, Bloomberg reports, citing people familiar with the matter.
At the top of the wishlist: Scrapping the 49% cap on foreign ownership. Saudi Arabia is the last major Gulf market still holding foreigners to a ceiling this tight. Morgan Stanley puts a number on what that’s costing the market — USD 4.3 bn in passive inflows if the ceiling goes to 75%, USD 7.4 bn if it disappears altogether, with Al Rajhi Bank standing to gain the most, as we reported last week. One catch: That move needs to happen by late-October or else it misses the index’s November review.
Foreigners aren’t the only ones with a wish list: Bankers want the IPO process fixed, too, saying the CMA’s habit of nudging issuers toward 30% retail allocation backfires when the retail demand is soft, leaving deals lopsided. They also want faster approvals and more breathing room on the six-month window companies get to actually list once they’re cleared, Bloomberg says.
Foreign money has kept coming anyway, rising from SAR 70 bn in 2017 to around SAR 450 bn now, per Argaam — and the CMA’s own figures put international holdings at SAR 590 bn as of 3Q 2025. But for a market this size, that’s still not enough.
The cost of borrowing in the Gulf keeps creeping up: Abu Dhabi’s 10-year USD sovereign bonds were trading at a 48 bps spread at 48 bps over US Treasuries as of 21 August against 27 bps in January, while the corporate USD curve spread over US Treasuries has widened to 115 bps against 79 bps in January, Fitch Ratings said in a new report shared with EnterpriseAM. The corporate spread is even wider than in March, when it was at 108 bps.
Abu Dhabi's 10-year yield is still the second-lowest in the Gulf, rising to about 5.2% by 21 August, after Qatar's 5% — up from roughly 4.5% in January.
Not everyone reads the widening the same way. Franklin Templeton’s Mohieddine Kronfol recently said that Gulf spread widening this year is a US Treasury story — rising Treasury yields pulling capital toward safe US paper and squeezing EM spreads generally — rather than a repricing of Gulf credit risk over war or geopolitics. He added that credit risk in Gulf debt markets remains within the same band it's held for five years. Fitch, however, attributes the sovereign and corporate widening to geopolitical risk premiums.
Investors put in USD 18.7 bn of orders for USD 2.75 bn of Saudi mortgage paper. Saudi Real Estate Refinance Company (SRC) priced a dual-tranche international sukuk 6.8x covered, in what is the largest international USD-denominated GCC sukuk of 2026, according to a statement from Bahrain’s Al Salam Bank, a joint lead manager and bookrunner on the deal.
Union Bank of India’s DIFC branch raised USD 600 mn from a dual-tranche bond, split evenly between a three-year tranche at a 5.23% coupon and a five-year tranche at 5.416%, Zawya reports. The three-year notes were priced at 93 bps over treasuries and the five-year at 102 bps, tightening 27 bps and 28 bps from initial guidance. The Reg S notes are rated BBB/BBB- by S&P and Fitch, in line with the issuer. Barclays, Citigroup, HSBC, Mashreq, and Standard Chartered were joint global coordinators and bookrunners.
The IFC wants to help Moroccan banks get bad loans off their books. The International Finance Corporation (IFC) is proposing a EUR 60 mn facility to buy non-performing loans (NPLs) and repossessed real estate from Moroccan banks. Under the proposal, the IFC and Germany’s EOS Holding will each commit up to EUR 30 mn. IFC’s board is projected to vote on the proposal — which is part of the IFC’s Distressed Asset Recovery Program — on 15 October.
The move is timely for Morocco. NPL rates (out of the banking sector’s outstanding credit) hit 8.3% in Morocco in early 2026, way above the 5% mark that usually separates stress from health in the banking sector. Morocco is already laying the regulatory groundwork to allow banks to sell distressed debt. The finance ministry published a draft law regulating NPL sales last March, but the law is still in the works.
Nasdaq-listed, Dubai-based mobility startup Swvl Holdings has entered into a definitive agreement for a USD 13 mn private placement priced at the market under Nasdaq rules, according to a press release. The round is led by Coefficient LP, a Houston-based investment firm backed by Egypt's Sawiris family, which is putting in USD 10 mn and will become Swvl's largest institutional shareholder upon closing. An existing shareholder is contributing the remaining USD 3 mn.
Swvl will issue just under 9 mn Class A shares at USD 1.446 apiece, with the investment expected to close tomorrow. Coefficient Founder and Managing Partner Abdalla Ali will join Swvl's board as part of the agreement. Proceeds are earmarked for accelerating Swvl's US expansion, launching a new lending offering for transport operators and partners, and strengthening the company's balance sheet.
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Dubai-based fintech Fasset joined the unicorn club after raising USD 68 mn in series C funding, pushing its valuation to USD 1 bn as it expands its stablecoin-based financial network and AI capabilities, the company said in a post on Facebook. The round was led by Japan’s SBI Group and follows a USD 51 mn Series B in May, bringing its total funding raised this year to USD 119 mn, Khaleej Times reports.
Chevron is the latest awardee from Libya’s 2025 oil and gas bid round to sign a production-sharing agreement, signing the agreement earlier this week for offshore area 106 in Libya’s Sirte Basin, NOC Chairman Masoud Suleiman said yesterday. The Sirte S4 block was the most competitive award of the 2025 round, which ended a 17-year freeze on exploration licenses in the country.
Three consortiums from the 2025 round that were awarded last February reached PSAs last June: Spain’s Repsol with Türkiye Petrolleri; Italy’s Eni with QatarEnergy; and Hungary’s MOL alongside Türkiye Petrolleri and Repsol. That leaves Nigeria’s Aiteo, whose winning bid would mark its first project in Libya if it advances to a PSA.
What does this mean? The PSA means Chevron can now start moving on the ground on the greenfield block. Chevron VP of Exploration Kevin McLachlan described the acreage as a fit for the company's exploration strategy — meaning seismic work, prospect identification, and eventually exploratory wells before anyone knows whether Contract Area 106 holds a commercial resource. Analysts expect any production contribution from the 2025-round blocks to arrive no earlier than the early-to-mid 2030s.
ICYMI- Industry sources we spoke to have flagged to us that international oil companies holding Libya concessions are adopting a wait-and-see approach before committing capital to exploration, citing security and governance concerns.
Bypass partner
French energy giant TotalEnergies is set to invest in expanding Abu Dhabi’s export pipeline capacity through Fujairah, as the UAE works to roughly double the amount of crude it can move to the Gulf of Oman without crossing Hormuz, Reuters quotes TotalEnergies CEO Patrick Pouyanne as saying.
What we know: The existing Habshan-Fujairah pipeline can currently carry up to 1.8 mn bbl / d. Adnoc is currently accelerating work on a second pipeline to Fujairah that it says was already 50% complete in May, targeting its delivery in 2027. The additional line would add around 1.5 mn bbl / d, lifting the UAE’s bypass capacity to roughly 3.3 mn bbl / d. It’s not clear if TotalEnergies would invest in the new pipeline or a different expansion.
More urea and ammonia
The Algerian Omani Fertilizer Company will expand production by 50%, with the expansion earmarked to come from an additional production line at the company’s plant in the port city of Arzew in Oran Province, Algeria’s Ministry of Energy and Mines announced Sunday. The company, a JV between Oman’s Suhail Bahwan Holding Group (51%) and Algerian state giant Sonatrach (49%), first began operations in 2017 and produces 4k tonnes of ammonia and 7,000k tonnes of granular urea per day.
Empty gates
Finnair is the latest airline to cancel flights to Dubai for the year. The company suspended its Helsinki-Dubai flights for the 2026-2027 winter season, running from 25 October 2026 through 27 March 2027, citing the unstable situation in the Middle East, according to an update on its website. Finnair joins the likes of Air Canada and Virgin Atlantic, which also won’t return to Dubai until 2027, and Dubai Airports CEO Paul Griffiths has said many foreign-based airlines have struggled to secure ins. allowing them to return to the region.
Oman is on its way to closing its budget deficit in 2026, driven by a 10% rise in net oil revenue and a 32% jump in natural gas income. The oil price windfall, cemented by Oman’s geography that sits outside Hormuz, led to revenues growing at a faster pace than spending — helping narrow the deficit in 1H to roughly OMR 17 mn, a 93% y-o-y drop from 1H 2025.
A disciplined fiscal policy protected the windfall: Public debt barely moved in 1H, rising just 0.3% y-o-y to reach OMR 14.2 bn. State revenues rose 13% y-o-y to OMR 6.6 bn (USD 17.1 bn) through June, while spending grew at a slower pace, up 9% to OMR 6.6 bn.
There’s one leak, though. The same crude price inflating the treasury is also inflating the subsidy bill that shields pump prices from it. Petroleum-product subsidies hit OMR 162 mn in 1H — 4.6 times the full-year amount Oman budgeted for 2026.
REMEMBER- Muscat built its 2026 budget on USD 60 per crude barrel, but the average this year has been at USD 74 so far — comfortably above the roughly USD 67 breakeven price Fitch estimates for Oman’s finances.
Lebanon’s hunt for corruption continues
Lebanon is launching an audit to investigate possible corruption and mismanagement of public funds in the energy sector. The audit will look into an agreement that secured three floating power units from the Turkish company Karpowership and the associated fuel import contracts that powered the vessels.
What is being investigated exactly? Former Energy Minister Gebran Bassil, who oversaw the adoption of the power barges, claimed that they generated cheaper power at roughly USD 0.14 per kWh compared to higher rates of the state-owned power utility Électricité du Liban (EdL) and private generators. However, EdL rates were consistently lower, Lebanon’s Energy Minister Joe Saddi said during a presser. Between 2014 and 2015, production costs at EdL’s main plants in Deir Ammar and Zahrani stood between USD 0.11 and 0.17 per kWh — compared to USD 0.13-0.2 cents for the floating plants, amounting to USD mns of losses, Saddi said.
Background: The floating power stations were initially brought in as a temporary solution to supply electricity while permanent power plants were built. However, those land-based plants were never completed, leaving the barges docked in Lebanon for nearly a decade while accumulating massive costs for the public treasury.
The Energy Ministry is looking for auditors for the probe, which will cover the deployment period from 2012 to 2021, and will span technical, financial, and legal aspects of the agreements. The ministry will accept bids from auditors up to 15 October.
Wiried in
Leoni’s Tunisian arm already out-earns every other country the German auto-parts giant operates in — and it isn’t done expanding. The company is looking to add new projects and expand existing ones across Tunisia, CEO Mohamed Larbi Rouis told Equipment and Housing Minister Salah Zouai, who also oversees the industry portfolio, during a meeting earlier this week. Leoni, which specializes in wiring harnesses, has been in Tunisia for over four decades, and its Tunisian arm generated some 29% of its global profits in 2024 — more than its plants in Morocco, Egypt, Serbia, Romania, Ukraine, Mexico, and China.
REMEMBER- Leoni has been expanding its North Africa wiring-harness footprint amid a localization drive in the region and a company-led push to relocate some of its Eastern Europe-based plants, like its Serbia operations, to new markets amid rising labor costs and the headwinds facing Europe’s auto industry. The expansion in Tunisia will come alongside new projects in Egypt, where Leoni is building a new industrial complex in Robbiki Leather City to add to its existing EUR 40 mn cable harness factory there, we reported in November.
Data point
1.1k — that’s the number of new firms the Qatar Financial Centre (QFC) onboarded in 1H 2026, pushing total registrations past 4.7k, according to QFC’s half-yearly update. The 1H figures represent 37% y-o-y growth. Technology and Innovation firms drove the intake, accounting for 544 of the new registrations on the back of roughly 2.3k licensing applications generated at Web Summit Qatar 2026, up 44% y-o-y.
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