Oil & Gas Market Scenarios: Prospects for the GCC countries in a “Net Zero by 2050” World

On 18 May 2021, the International Energy Agency (IEA) published a landmark report on a pathway to net-zero carbon emissions by 2050. Among the many proposals in the report is the call to immediately end investments in oil and gas exploration and development. Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC) economies still depend heavily on oil and gas for their national income, government budgets and social order. They have all, to varying degrees, embarked on economic diversification initiatives over the last several years to reduce such dependency. However, the dual shocks of relatively low oil and gas prices since mid-2014 and the pandemic-induced global economic slowdown in 2020 afflicted the GCC countries at a time when the urgency for promoting economic diversification, expanding employment opportunities for their youthful population and attaining fiscal sustainability had already become critical. This webinar seeks to explore the following questions facing the GCC: How credible is the IEA pathway to net zero by 2050 and how will this affect the price and volume outlook for oil and gas exports from the GCC? By discouraging private sector investments in the oil and gas, are the policies promoted by the IEA favourable to the national oil and gas companies (NOCs) in the GCC and OPEC+ more generally, regarding their market shares in global oil and gas markets? Are there specific corporate strategies that GCC NOCs will tend to favour if the OECD countries adopt policies recommended by the IEA in the “net zero by 2050” scenario?