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  • Can Ankara-Riyadh rapprochement help improve Turkey-Egypt ties?

    According to Egypt's former deputy foreign minister Hassan Haridi, Cairo will remain reluctant to fully normalize diplomatic ties until Turkey cuts off all the Brotherhood-affiliated TV channels based in Turkey. Ali al Hafni, another former Egyptian diplomat, meanwhile, said that Turkey also needs to take additional confidence building measures before a full normalization. Similarly, Shoukry stressed last year year that Ankara needs to stop meddling in Egypt's internal affairs and sponsoring hostile radical groups.  

  • What’s Next for Marines in the Middle East?

    The task force, created in 2016, is in line with some of the key pillars of Commandant Gen. David Berger’s Force Design 2030 plan: naval integration and a return to the service’s “maritime roots.” In November, it led U.S. participation in a Navy amphibious exercise with the Israeli Defense Force, and in late March, Marines under the direction of Task Force 51/5 worked with UK Royal marines for a training exercise that involved boarding, searching, and seizing a vessel.

  • Can Saudi Arabia’s Film Industry Take Off?

    “It’s a very important era in the filmmaking industry in Saudi, and I think it’s an even more important time for us as creative women,” Sarah Taibah, a Saudi-born filmmaker who studied fine arts in San Francisco, told Foreign Policy. “Our voices were overlooked for so long, and that ends now.”

  • Can Saudi Arabia’s Film Industry Take Off?

    Riyadh has also set a target of 100 movies to be filmed in Saudi Arabia by 2030, with the goal of making the country the most popular destination for shooting films in the region, replacing Morocco. Saudi ministers are meeting film executives in Bollywood and elsewhere, offering producers significant concessions and discounts if they shoot in Saudi Arabia and hire local talent.

  • Opinion: What if the post-American Middle East actually works?

    UAE satellites orbiting Mars and UAE and Saudi Arabia’s massive investments in renewable energy and tech cities underline an effort to move beyond the past. Of late, geopolitical shifts resulting from the Ukraine war may also be a factor.

  • Commentary: Is the Saudi–Turkish normalization a genuine reset—or more of the same?

    The dominant geopolitical and geostrategic parameters of the Saudi-Turkish relationship as well as the lack of a complex economic interdependency suggest that it is too early to celebrate the reconciliation—let alone envisage the trajectory of relations over the coming years.

  • Is Saudi Arabia Quietly Trying to Help Europe’s Oil Consumers?

    In these circumstances, a marketing policy of maintaining sales into a weakening regional Asian market should see the Kingdom cutting its regional differentials relative to Europe and the U.S.  While Aramco’s European and American differentials have increased, they have not increased as rapidly as Asian differentials — especially for Arab “medium” — the Saudi crude that is the closest substitute for the main Russian export blend, Urals (see table above).

  • Is Saudi Arabia Quietly Trying to Help Europe’s Oil Consumers?

    Saudi Aramco’s global marketing organization — with offices in key cities throughout the world — follows regional oil market developments very closely, and this allows them to fine-tune differentials based on subtle regional shifts in market fundamentals.  For example, if Asia needs more diesel fuel, Aramco might price crudes that yield a higher share of diesel to be directed toward Asian markets.  It is an incredibly efficient and well-informed organization, allowing the Aramco to maximize revenues from its oil sales within the policy framework set by the Energy Minister.

  • CCUS: Where is carbon capture working?

    In recent years, globally, CCUS has been applied most often in the gas processing, fertiliser, and ethanol industries – despite the rate of carbon capture staying pretty consistent across all sectors at around 90%–95%, according to BNEF’s Madrid. This is because those industries have the lowest cost of capture: they typically generate a pure CO2 stream that is stripped out as part of the production process.

  • Tim Lenderking: Hope in Yemen?

    I think that the Houthis have not been able to impose their will on the ground in Yemen—which is something that they’ve had success in over the last year, particularly their offensive on the city of Marib, about 100km east of Sana`a. There are energy platforms there that the Houthis would like to control. The city is controlled by the Yemeni government, and the Houthis have thrown a lot of fight at Marib over the last year. But they haven’t succeeded in taking the town.