Abstract
With the complex presence of important natural reserves, energy is considered as the main key ingredient to facilitate economic development in the Middle East, GCC, and Maghreb regions. Expectations for a rapidly growing economy in the next decade will likely cause an increase in the fraction of energy consumed domestically, limiting what is available for export. Considered as the home of global oil and gas reserves, the Middle East and North Africa (MENA) region is the cornerstone of the global energy architecture, and the global low-carbon energy transition poses critical questions to MENA oil and gas producers. Unfortunately, as the coronavirus (COVID-19) pandemic sweeps across the world, growth in the MENA region was projected to fall to 2.8% in 2020, lower than the growth rates during the 2008 global financial crisis and the 2015 oil price shock. Before the coronavirus (COVID-2019), the sharp drop in oil and gas prices that began in 2015 fostered MENA hydrocarbon producers to launch ambitious economic reform programs in all regions. The main goal of these programs was not only to increase the diversification of investment sectors to boost national and regional economies but also to encourage the development of the nonhydrocarbon sector. This article argues for a new challenge investigation and analysis to figure out with current MENA policy options and future prospects, as well as the present impact of COVID-19, in addition to the public policies that encourage diversification economy sector to avoid entire dependence on oil and gas in export are dressed. It also deals with the investigation of the pressing need to create job opportunities for a large and youthful population and the new definition of the possibility of the world moving more aggressively towards low-carbon integration.
1. Introduction
Endowed with fifty percent of the globe’s known hydrocarbon (oil and gas) reserves, the Middle East and North Africa (MENA) region has become, during the second half of the twentieth century, a cornerstone of the world energy architecture [1]. MENA is a region with more than twenty countries, including Saudi Arabia, Kuwait, Iran, Qatar, Bahrain, UAE, Iraq, Jordan, Oman, Lebanon, Syria, Yemen, and others. MENA is the union of three main parts: the Maghreb (Algeria, Morocco, Tunisia), the Middle East part (Egypt, Iran, Jordan, Lebanon, the Palestinian Authority), and the GCC part (Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates, Bahrain, Kuwait, Qatar, Oman). The leading in hydrocarbon resources is dominated by oil and gas as the main export products, with Saudi Arabia being first oil producer and supplier [2, 3], and Iran being the first to lead in gas exportation [4, 5]. In the Middle East, oil and natural gas resources are considered the main source of income for the majority of countries.
The increasing growth in Gross Domestic Product (GDP) and the remarkable boost observed with the population explosion, especially in the Middle East and GCC, have pushed energy demand to increase, thus bringing the then-Middle East’s countries to the top of the production ranking. As of 2015, the region’s energy demand was already estimated at more than 5% of the world’s energy demand [6, 7]. As a result, the share of domestic energy consumption in total production value reached 25% in 2015, and Iran, Kuwait, Saudi Arabia, and the United Arab Emirates accounted for 77% of global demand. Historically, it has been observed that economic growth brings higher environmental degradation and natural resource use. A wide range of literature [8–10] already shows an increased output across the world, which has been attained at a serious degradation of the environment. Climate change and global warming are of the most recent and notable environmental degradation observed, and this situation is also qualified as an essential impact factor on MENA economic activity growth.
For economic diversity and labor productivity, a series of economic reforms are currently being initiated to translate MENA into a large account and reduce any deficits [11], put downward pressure on currencies, and lower government spending [12, 13]. This situation will allow each MENA country to develop stable economies without suffering from dependence on oil and gas. In the context of gas pollution and global warming, the Paris Agreement [14] marked a major step forward in international measures to deal with the presence of global warming [15, 16]. Significant findings were reported by the study of Bilgili et al. [17], which showed that there is a negative impact of energy consumption on youth unemployment rates. In addition, the causality tests yield unidirectional causality from energy consumption to youth unemployment rates.
Previously, all represented countries decided to act in order to the limit global average temperature increase in the world and keep the temperature below 2°C. This commitment is helping to pursue measures to reinforce the limit of decarburization’s contribution to 1.5°C above preindustrial levels. This further reinforced the decarburization measures already being undertaken in different regions of the globe. The contribution of technological advancements today has also increased the cost-competitiveness of low-carbon technologies such as solar and wind power generation, power storage technologies, and electric vehicles [18, 19]. This has already started to significantly reshape the global energy system, notably by giving a greater role to solar and wind in the electricity generation mix [20–22]. However, this progress recently has been stopped by the new coronavirus COVID-19. However, Bilgili et al. [23] concluded that GDP per capita does not affect much the level of deaths of the COVID-19 pandemic when they investigate the quantitative effect of development level-income and number of hospital beds on the number of deaths due to the COVID-19 pandemic. Iorio et al. [24] analyzed the sustainability of low-temperature geothermal field exploitation in a carbonate reservoir near Mondragon (CE), Southern Italy, [25–27] and introduced innovative solutions to reduce global energy warming.
Costa et al. [28] introduced the main scope of improving micro-cogeneration technologies fueled by biomass through the Italian project “INNOVARE—Innovative plants for distributed poly-generation by residual biomass.” A microcombined heat and power (mCHP) unit was chosen as a case study to discuss the pros and cons of biomass-powered cogeneration within a national park, especially due to its flexibility of use. A detailed synergic numerical and experimental characterization of the selected cogeneration system was performed in order to identify its main inefficiencies. Improvements in its operation were optimized by acting on the engine control strategy and by also adding a post-treatment system on the engine exhaust gas line. Finally, the global efficiency of the system increased from 45.8% to 63.2%. The right blending of different biomasses led to an important improvement in the reliability of the entire plant despite using an agrifood residual, such as olive pomace.
This pandemic swept through a region already struggling with the effects of a decade of uprisings, failed or struggling economic reforms, and international conflict, far and away from all current contributions from MENA. As the magnitude of the pandemic’s global impact became clear, energy trends and challenges in global energy warming attracted scholars and government to figure out with COVID-19 related issues and study new economic prospects, and political sciences contributions. The study conducted by Shehzad et al. [29] reported that there was a significant decline in the concentration level of gas emissions during phase one of the lockdown caused by the COVID-19 pandemic. Therefore, the current paper establishes an integral investigation with the analysis of new job opportunities and challenges stimulated by COVID-19.
This article argues for a new challenge investigation and analysis to figure out current MENA policy options and future prospects, as well as the current impact of COVID-19; public policies that encourage diversification economy sector to avoid entire dependence on oil and gas in export are dressed. It also deals with an investigation of the pressing need to create job opportunities for a large and youthful population and the new definition of the possibility of the world moving more aggressively towards low-carbon integration. The article is structured as follows: Section 2 outlines economic growth and global warming challenge prospects before the arrival of new COVID-19. The new energy trends, with the current impact of COVID-19 across MENA countries, are examined against global energy demands and measures. Finally, the article concludes with a call to MENA exporters to consider economic diversification as an unavoidable pathway to be pursued in order to guarantee future economic prosperity in all MENA regions.
1.1. Research Questions
(i)What role does energy play in the facilitation of economic development in the MENA region?(ii)How have public policies been developed in order to encourage the diversification of economic sectors in order to avoid reliance on the oil and gas sector?(iii)Why is the MENA region regarded as being a cornerstone of the global energy architecture?(iv)How have technological advancements in the modern world contributed towards the reshaping of the global energy system?(v)How has the progress of the global energy system been affected as a result of the COVID-19 pandemic?
1.2. Research Objectives
(i)To investigate the role played by energy in the facilitation of economic development in the MENA region.(ii)To determine how public policies have been developed in order to encourage the diversification of economic sectors in order to avoid reliance on the oil and gas sector.(iii)To analyze why the MENA region is regarded as being a cornerstone of the global energy architecture.(iv)To investigate how technological advancements in the modern world contributed to the reshaping of the global energy system.(v)To analyze how the progress in the global energy system has been affected as a result of the COVID-19 pandemic.
2. Economic Growth of MENA and Global Warming
2.1. Oil Resource and Natural Gas Exports
MENA countries and their covered environments are seen as a cornerstone of the global energy market, with oil, gas, and natural resources [30]. Geographically, this region occupies an important position in the world’s hydrocarbon supply chain and has an important resource reserve, with a global production rate of 37% in oil and 22% of global gas production estimated in 2017.
Priya et al. [31] discussed the perspective of COVID 19’s impact on the global economy, energy, and environment and summarized the impact of COVID-19 on the economy, energy, and environment. Besides, it provided some critical recommendations and policy measures for the energy sector to overcome the challenges of the impact of COVID-19. They present the energy situation pre-COVID-19 and explain how the Energy Return on Investment (EROI) can be used to display how the price intensity of oil extraction has changed over time. Also, the trend of EROI was decreasing as a result of resources depletion and a gradual inclination towards the use of more carbon-friendly energy sources.
Table 1 presents the oil and gas production of MENA countries. The first column of this table arranges the MENA countries in descending order based on country oil production, while the second and third columns report the daily oil and annual gas production of these countries. With the most oil volume production, Saudi Arabia is the leader, followed respectively by Iran, Iraq, the United Arab Emirates, Kuwait, UAE, Iraq, Oman, and others. On the ranking position in gas, Iran is the regional leader, followed respectively by Qatar, Saudi Arabia, Algeria, and the United Arab Emirates.
In MENA countries, the Middle East region holds 79.4% of the total region’s oil reserves, making it the main supplier in the global oil markets. The giant oil reserves controlled by Iran, Kuwait, Saudi Arabia, and the UAE are the four main countries producers. As detailed in Table 1, four countries are followed by seven other countries considered as the dominants in MENA, where Iran produces 9.8% of the global oil reserve ranking the role of third biggest oil reserve distributed around the globe and led by Saudi Arabia. Behind the characteristics observed for each producer, Kuwait exhibits the particularity of being the only country with an expected life duration evaluated at more than 94 years. Oil in Kuwait represents a crucial ingredient in energy production equipment and demands. The oil reserves and consumption, as well as CO2 emissions for the four largest MENA producer countries, are presented in Table 2, which covers the data from 2012 to 2018. It could be noticed that among this group, Saudi Arabia had the largest oil serves in 2015 (266 bbl/year), besides having the highest contribution percentage to the global oil reserves (16%) in 2016, as well as the biggest oil exports in 2018, which were 7373 k barrels/day, which are followed by Iran, Kuwait, and the UAE, respectively. However, while Kuwait is ahead of the UAE in its oil reserves and production, the UAE came in front of Kuwait in oil exporting, consumption, and CO2 emissions as well.
In these last two decades, there has been more evolution in MENA energy production and consumption, including exportation . The Middle East region, as the main leading engine, has experienced a series of remarkable transformations, high growth registered in the sector of economic development, with high population growth, and remarkable volume registered in export demands.
Figure 1 represents primary energy production in 1990 and 2015. In 2015, the volume of revenues based on exportation conducted the regional GDP in the region, approaching 3.5%, with primary energy as the engine of production and where demand grew at an average annual rate of 2% and 5%, respectively [32, 33].
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In the context of energy production before the COVID-19 pandemic, the main four producer countries show mix variations in terms of fuel category and its share in total primary energy production. Fossil fuels present a less significant production contribution to renewable resources. If this evaluation is made by comparing production from each producer, Iran’s primary energy is qualified as a mix with a total of five main resources: coal, oil, natural gas, hydro, and nuclear energy. Oil and natural gas still hold the major resource position in production due to the high domestic energy demand for exports. The situation of Saudi Arabia’s primary energy production exceeded 50% in volume.
2.2. Targets in GDP and Labor Productivity
The extent of employment loss is determined by country-specific labour market institutions, but in every country, lockdowns have been accompanied by a historically unprecedented spike in unemployment. In the United States, initial unemployment claims have been recorded at more than 26 million since the start of the lockdown, indicating that the rate of employment loss is around 10 times faster than it was in the aftermath of the fall of Lehman Brothers in 2008. Registered unemployment numbers might even understate the impact, given the importance of informal and “gig economy” employment in the exceptionally badly hit tourism sector. Those who have lost their jobs are concentrated in the lower-income segments. Even with unemployment support, they are likely to cut their spending beyond what the restrictions would mandate. Similarly, given the uncertainties of consumer demand, companies hold back investment projects even if social distancing measures would still allow the investment [34].
Oil and gas revenues are the main economic and revenue activities of MENA organizations. Iraq’s GDP accounts to 38% in 2017; Kuwait’s GDP is estimated at 37%, and Oman’s GDP at 23%. It should be mentioned that the majority of MENA governments focus most of their activities and reforms on hydrocarbon production and exportation. The contribution from hydrocarbon production is very inconsistent. For these reasons, it is observed that the major sources of manufacturing value-added tend to include refineries, metallurgy, mining, chemical, but also mineral industries, while some nonhydrocarbon industries, such as urbanization and construction, depend heavily on MENA governments’ projects [35].
Fifty percent of the country’s GDP and 90% of the Saudi Arabian total national economy’s revenues come from oil resources [36]. However, the volume of oil consumed in Saudi Arabia also brings the country to the sixth position among global oil consumers [37]. This position is followed by the UAE, with 5.9% of the total largest oil reserves, where the country’s population is known to represent only 9,631 million (nearly to 0.1% of the global population) in 2018.
The situation of fiscal revenues also plays a major role in MENA generally, and particularly in Middle East countries, where in 2017, oil and gas revenue from Saudi Arabia accounted for 67% of fiscal revenues, Kuwait fiscal revenues accounted for 90%, and Algeria fiscal revenues accounted for 60%. The same fiscal revenues in 2018 were accounted for. In the context of exportation volume, in 2018, oil and gas accounted for 80% of Saudi Arabia’s total exports, 90% of Kuwait’s total exports, 86% of Qatar’s total exports, and 95% of Algeria’s total exports [38].
All countries in the MENA region have an environment strategy (which may be included in SDGs 2030), and these strategies are based on preserving the environment and decreasing GHG emissions in parallel with increasing GDP.
MENA hydrocarbon producers are today more organized than last ten years. There are new economic diversification policies working today to increase the economy in the private sector and improve the integration and development of small and medium enterprises (SMEs) by creating more jobs and investing in education and innovation, as detailed in Table 3.
As detailed in Figure 2, based on the integration of the nonhydrocarbon policies to avoid dependence on hydrocarbon exports [39], MENA producer’s strategies seem to go in the right direction: all countries are agreeing to increase investment and services in the private sector to bring more contribution to obtain a high GDP value. This new initiative, implemented by2030, can multiply the value of labor productivity in MENA, especially in the GCC region. By making these new national plans, any country’s private sector is going to be stimulated, and investment and job creation will push up national GDP more than before when oil exports constitute the main stimulator.
With these new strategies, hydrocarbon production sectors are going to implement long-term policies aimed at reducing environmental impacts and the problems of emissions, as they are discussed in the next section [40]. During the last twenty years, the economic diversification vision program implementation did not bring all national economy contributors on the same page; with the old program implemented during the past years, there was a high risk of oil market volatility, but today two additional arguments have emerged:(1)The speed of the current global energy transition; this first argument, which illustrates a considerable degree of uncertainty observed, also spreads around the long-term sustainability of hydrocarbon exports. For this reason, the argument is considered an essential justification of the new measure adopted today for all MENA producers to diversify reforms and bring more interest by increasing job opportunities.(2)The urgent need on increasing job opportunities; this second argument represents a challenging program for all GCC and Middle East regions, with special attention on the youthful population labor. With 2% of population growth per year and a total of 180 of the population during these last 25 years. MENA countries are considered as having the highest average of young population in the world. Therefore, today 60% of the population is under the age of 25, with a median age estimated at 22 compared to 28 for the global average. The current data show a big challenge for job, as detailed in Figure 2, and with large numbers of young citizens set to further join their labor markets in the years ahead due to demographics.
2.3. CO2 and Gas Emission in Global Warming
From 2010 to 2019, the Middle-East and Northeast African region’s CO2 measure increased; this is an important characteristic factor responsible for high emissions in MENA, whatever the value of GDP during the same time has been multiplied by more than 7.5 and especially from 200 billion in 1993 to 1,500 billion in 2016. As illustrated in Figure 3, results showed there are not any signs of decoupling concerning the value of GDP and its emissions in the MENA as they both climb up between the period 1993–2016. The both behavior of GDP and emission growth are detailed in Figures 3 and 4 where two characteristics very distinct are displayed during two different periods of the time. It is important to note that the problem of emission in the region historically presents another similar evolution observed between the periods 2003–2006 and 2008–2013, with growth observed at 4% and 7%, respectively. However, these observations also contain some decoupling expectations with emission values negatives and positives observed as close to GDP. However, these results illustrated in both figures do not provide enough evidence to conclude that decoupling constitutes an essential norm in the MENA.
The situation of CO2 emission brings Iran, which is considered on the ranking list as the first country CO2 emitters not only in the MENA region, but also globally. Its annual average rate is estimated to be 7% in 2015 against 5.2% of Saudi Arabia’s CO2 emissions annual average rate produced during the same period [41].
However, from the context of Saudi Arabia, 70% of the country’s fossil fuel-related CO2 emissions are coming from the combustion of oil products, and the remaining 30% are from natural gas. Kuwait’s CO2 emissions average is 5.3% today and has been showing a growing process year after year since 2010. The average accounted for by the UAE is estimated at 1.3%, reaching 44 tons each year since 2010. Most of the MENA CO2 producers’ countries’ emissions come from the sectors of electricity generation and petrochemical industries. As we can see from the results displayed in Figure 5, the CO2 emissions from different economic sectors are different for the four first oil and gas MENA producers’ countries.
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Table 4 represents the territorial emissions in some MENA countries (kgCO2 per GDP). In Egypt, territorial emissions have decreased from 2016 to 2020. But in other countries, the territorial emissions were increasing, especially in Iran, Saudi Arabia, and Bahrain.
3. MENA Energy Trends and COVID-19 Economic Impact
3.1. Oil and Financial Marketing Measure
Behind oil export capacities, MENA is an area that includes the Maghreb, the Middle East, and the GCC zone; with an apparition of COVID-19 [42], a crucial economic impact through the region causes unpredictable changes. This situation causes a crucial decrease in trade, disruption of hydrocarbon production, a fall in oil demand and its prices, including a tightening of financial conditions. The challenges in oil, gas, renewable resources, and economic growth for the next decades are especially daunting for all MENA zones. The apparition of regions where the hardness of preparing weak health programs for the outbreak will be aggravated by disruptions in world trade competition. This put more pressure on hydrocarbons and other goods, resulting in substantial price increases. GDP growth is affected by the end of 2019; economic reforms should be the main way possible to fight and this crisis, which encourages losses to the MENA countries through increased unemployment.
According to the impact of COVID-19 on the economy and social isolation, the temporary break in the production network directly reduces energy consumption around the world [31]. Also, because of minimizing the demand for people’s transportation (planes, buses, cars…etc.), the demand of oil (for energy, transportation, raw materials, and so on) decreased dramatically. This situation produced a negative effect on GDP and economic activity in the entire world.
One of the first factors impacted by the COVID-19 penetration was its oil prices; this pandemic and quarantine measures caused a series of unprecedented contractions in all MENA oil producers by decreasing demand for oil products exponentially.
3.2. Barrel Price and COVID-19 Impact on Oil & Gas
The biggest result of oil decrease prices is one of shock spread automatically on oil producers, with net prices below USD 20 for the barrel and concerning its Brent crude, causing a value loss of up to 70% and limiting storage capacity. the situation of demand in production, however, presents different appreciation from MENA global producers; from international energy agencies (IEA) considered as small producers, the new coronavirus situation is bringing in a high-level new demand for example from the United States or from non-OPEC countries, accelerating the new examination of all key issues in demand, supply, refining, and trade as quick as possible to approaching 2015 [43]. The lower-cost producers are considered the perfect compatibles; they have the best opportunities and a considerable gap on fixed prices, but those prices cannot allow global suppliers such as Saudi Arabia or Iran to stand up on the market. MENA countries, and especially leaders in oil and gas volume production, are requested to analyze possibilities to allocate additional funding to those sectors most affected by the crisis with the purpose of reducing the impact on GDP growth.
Oil and gas prices collapsed, affecting OPEC+, the United States, and also G20 measures. In some countries, as in the case of Russia and the rest of OPEC oil producers, on April 2020, decided to withdraw 10 million barrels per day, or 10% of global production, from the market for the months of May and June. The high demand destruction reduced into small and short redeployments of markets in the near term as presented in Figure 6.
3.3. MENA Governments Apply Securitization Theory against COVID-19
From February to April, the value of loss in the MENA region is evaluated at nearly USD 2 billion, with sizable outflows observed near the end of April. This loss observed was very deep in some countries, such as the United Arab Emirates, where its main equity index has fallen by 30% in March, and also in Egypt, where the Stock Exchange (EGX) value declined by 29% in February. With the COVID-19, leaders established a MENA committee to take all measures and pursue the government strategies. Any country member was working inside an institutional coordination committee representation, working together to create, monitor, and evaluate the progress of the situation. Many governments also adopted measures to ensure the continuity of public services in countries where confinement measures were imposed.
With the propagation of the pandemic, a series of policy responses were taken into consideration for the specific challenges faced by women during the evolution and propagation of the crisis. From the data analyzed, results showed that COVID-19 was less deadly for women than for men.
In most MENA countries, women dominate the frontlines of health care and social services responders, and this situation conducted government committees to view the social and economic impacts of the pandemic observed on women as a key issue. The female labor market participation rate in the regional MENA economy contribution is20.2%, with a part-time job representation average estimated to be nearly 50% in some countries, such as Morocco and Palestine. With this observation, GDP value is the main factor that showed clearly the lack and consequences if all MENA stood out without taking any measure to reduce risqué and exposition of women against the pandemic's propagation.
The youth population in MENA occupies an important position. More than 110 million schools where young average individuals aged nearly 16 have limited access to formal and nonformal education, a situation caused by the closure of school and university facilities. With different social distancing measures introduced to different extents in national contexts. This situation resulted in an economic slowdown and exacerbated youth’s vulnerability, which impacted the labor market in all MENA regions, where youth unemployment rates are currently estimated to be as high as 27% on average. With restricted movement and a lack of employment opportunities, including high exclusion in society, a large portion of young people decided to take an active role in mitigating the crisis and preparing for recovery.
The impact of COVID-19 on global and local markets increased aversion from investors in the MENA region, causing dramatically high disinvestments in all regions including the Maghreb (Algeria, Morocco, and Tunisia) region, the Middle East (Egypt, Iran, Jordan, Lebanon, and the Palestinian Authority) region, and the GCC (Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates, Bahrain, Kuwait, Qatar, and Oman) region. Oil and trade in the context of production and demand were hardly hit by disrupted global supply chains. China and EU organization trade constituting the pioneer of North Africa’s trade revenues with their 60% of market penetration developed new measures. Saudi Arabia and the UAE showed important export deficit values not only in oil but also in the electrical machinery and chemical industries. Given all this analysis, the MENA region, with the arrival of COVID-19 is standing up with new programs as a special opportunity for all MENA countries to actively promote the relocation of investments and all gas industries into different regions in order to allow MENA regional and global companies to be closer to their global markets.
With COVID-19, the phenomenon of securitization became a major central strategy; the global need to respond to the spread of the COVID-19 virus played out in distinctive ways in the MENA region. The security threat was defined as the main target in all MENA countries, but there was also a new concern on a public health issue.
To reach and bring out this issue, COVID-19 was defined inside a concept called “securitization theory” and adopted by all regions. In this new challenge, the Middle Eastern countries played a major role by being creative and adopting policies and programs that stimulated the spirit of war against a common “enemy” called “COVID-19.”
The adoption of concept of the securitization theory was originally developed by Ole Weaver and interpreted by the Copenhagen School of security studies in IR theory [44]. The theory considered the interpretation of securitization as a speech act where the issue becomes a threat whenever an actor declares it to be a matter of national security, a move which has distinctive political consequences. This concept was traditionally defined by political actors as objective facts articulated. Buzan, Weaver, and De Wild argue, “the special nature of security threats justifies the use of extraordinary measures to handle them” and the suspension of “normal politics” in dealing with that issue. With this interpretation, securitization is then seen as an oriented concept, an elevation of an issue beyond the level of everyday politics, which justifies the use of emergency measures to deal with it.
In the existing literature, Margaret Chan, when speaking again of the propagation of the Ebola epidemic, qualified it as “a threat to national security well beyond the outbreak zones.” Former U.S. President Barack Obama described the Ebola outbreak as “a growing threat to regional and global security [45].” The securitization concept was applied previously in the Middle East by scholars to analyze and investigate the situation of GCC policies concerning the Shi’a issue.
The cases of Israel and Jordan help to illustrate how securitization theory can contribute to bring more effective strategies to all GCC, Maghreb, and Middle East countries and respond efficiently against COVID-19. The choice of these countries was not due to their similarity but due to their different capacities to respond to the pandemic by adopting similar policies.
Israel adopted a so-called “right on target” strategy to deal with the pandemic. In reaction, the country implemented a variety of measures such as self-quarantine, limiting public gatherings, and closing schools, supermarkets, playgrounds, universities, and kindergartens. Key actors in Israel also securitized the pandemic. In May, Jordan introduced some of the toughest anticoronavirus measures in the world. These measures included an indefinite curfew, a one-year prison sentence for those who violated it by going outside, and the closing of all businesses in the Kingdom. In addition to these harsh measures, Jordan also securitized the coronavirus crisis, defining it as a war-like situation.
4. Discussion Section
4.1. Research Methodology
To study the fundamental correlation between economic growth, energy consumption (GDP), and CO2 emissions in the MENA regions, as well as the main effects of the COVID-19 crisis on all previous terms, we propose to first identify the data along with the corresponding descriptive statistics, followed by four analyses such as the energy-economic analysis, the analysis of oil and gas contribution to the economic sector, the MENA and global energy architecture analysis, and finally the analysis of COVID-19 pandemic effects on the global energy system.
4.2. Data
The variables used in this study are energy consumption (EC) measured in kg of oil and gas equivalent per capita, GDP per capita measured in USD, and CO2 emissions measured in metric tons per capita. These variables come from the World Development Indicators (WDI, 2010). The annual data are selected to cover the period from 1993 to 2021 for the core MENA countries: Algeria, Egypt, Iran, Iraq, Kuwait, Morocco, Oman, Qatar, Saudi Arabia, Tunisia, Bahrain, and the United Arab Emirates. More focusing on the first four oil and gas producer countries; Saudi Arabia, Iran, Kuwait, and UAE, was exerted in this study.
4.3. Descriptive Statistics and Econometric Methodology
The most adapted methodology begins with a descriptive statistic of these three variables for more contributors from MENA countries. After that, we pass on to apply the corresponding analysis for each term.
4.4. Research Limitations
The research study focused on the general region, and therefore, this implies that some of the contents may not be applicable to the individual countries. There is therefore a need to ensure that future research studies focus on the individual countries as opposed to the general regions.
5. Conclusion
This article investigates the ambitious economic reform programs adopted by the Middle East, GCC, and Maghreb regions organized around MENA, where oil and gas were considered the main export resources, and the drop observed from all hydrocarbon producers since 2014. This situation encouraged a positive view on their implementation prospects but was stopped by the new COVID-19 in 2019. The challenge to diversify economic sectors and reduce CO2 contributions to emissions in the region multiplied. The aspects analyzed provided new theoretical learning to better understand the status of their hydrocarbon management policies and how they can affect sustainable energy development in the region if efficient contributions are not adopted. The implementation of securitization theory implemented by several MENA countries argued that security threats do not simply exist as natural facts but can be defined and articulated by political actors to bring more impact on their targets. The GDP value and labor productivity before and after the apparition of the new COVID-19 pandemic are a new contribution in this work; investigations conducted by hydrocarbon producers to invest in new research allow this content to be viewed with special appreciation as an academic contribution. Some important results can be summarized as follows:(i)Most of the MENA CO2 emissions producers’ countries’ emissions come from the sectors of electricity generation and petrochemical industries.(ii)70% of the country, fossil fuel-related CO2 emissions are coming from the combustion of oil products, and the remaining 30% are from natural gas.(iii)Kuwait’s average CO2 emissions are now at 5.3% and showing a growth per year since 2010.(iv)The average accounted by the UAE is estimated at 1.3% and reaching 44 tons each year since 2010.(v)Bahrain, Iran, and Saudi Arabia had high territorial emissions (kgCO₂ per GDP) in 2010. The territorial emissions in 2020 are 0.558, 0.545, and 0.401 for Bahrain, Iran, and Saudi Arabia, respectively.(vi)Egypt has the lowest territorial emissions in comparison to the rest of the countries in the MENA region.
Data Availability
No data were used to support this study.
Conflicts of Interest
The authors declare that they have no conflicts of interest.
Acknowledgments
This work was partially supported by the National Natural Science Foundation of China (No. 71901025), Humanities and Social Sciences Foundation of Ministry of Education of China (18YJC790106).