Nuclear Energy Developments in the Mediterranean and the Gulf

Abstract

Several Arab countries have recently manifested an interest in civilian nuclear energy. For some, like Egypt, this is the revival of an old interest, for others, notably the members of the Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC), it represents a clear reversal of previously held positions. This interest has been interpreted as an implicit threat to move in the direction of acquiring a military nuclear capability, in case Iran develops a bomb. Instead, the article argues that interest in nuclear energy has strong economic motivations for all Arab countries, although the position of the GCC is quite different from that of North Africa and Levant countries, from the point of view of both the cogency of motivation and the ability concretely and rapidly to launch a civilian nuclear program.

Notes

This article is a revised version of a paper presented at the IAI Seminar on "Transatlantic Perspectives on the Mediterranean", held in Rome on 28 June 2008, and made possible by generous funding from the German Marshall Fund of the United States in Washington DC

¹Bahrain, Kuwait, Oman, Qatar, Saudi Arabia and United Arab Emirates.

²For example, see the speech by the Saudi Minister of Petroleum, Ali Naimi, at the High Level Meeting on Climate Change, UN General Assembly, 24 September 2007. http://www.un.org/webcast/climatechange/highlevel/2007/pdfs/saudi%20arabia-en.pdf

³The very useful and well documented IISS Strategic Dossier Nuclear Programmes in the Middle East gives a more balanced assessment than most, but still ends up emphasizing security and political motivations.

⁴These discussions do not take place in public, and it is always very difficult to document who is in which camp. That said, it is widely believed that in the Saudi context the anti-Iranian anti-Shia position has been spearheaded by Prince Bandar bin Sultan, who continued to have frequent contacts with the US administration after he was replaced as Ambassador to the US by Prince Turki al Faisal, eventually prompting the resignation of the latter.

⁵That the GCC countries might rapidly imitate Iran, should it acquire a nuclear weapon capability, is quite unrealistic. They would rely primarily on the US’ nuclear umbrella. Developing a nuclear power program has no effective function in such a context.

⁶“Egyptian president's son proposes developing nuclear energy”, International Herald Tribune, 19 September 2006.

⁷Dolphin has been exporting gas to Dubai since 2007 and to Oman since October 2008. Middle East Economic Survey (MEES), 10 November 2008, 20.

⁸Iran has requested a renegotiation of the price originally contracted with Crescent and supply has not yet started. See C. Stanton “Iran turns up the heat on UAE's Crescent Petroleum”, The National (Abu Dhabi), 16 September 2008.

⁹See “SRAK Strikes Gas In Saudi Arabia, But Tough Terms And Rising Costs Cloud Development Prospects”, MEES, 28 July 2008.

¹⁰The Moratorium was originally imposed in 2005. The Qatari Minister, Abdallah al Attiyah, recently stated: “In the 1990s I traveled the world to convince people to take our gas. It was very difficult. Now I have a long queue in my office. We are waiting for the reservoir study. We have to think very carefully and for the long term. We are a country not a company. We cannot say ‘Goodbye Charlie’ and leave.” MEES, 14 April 2008, 20.

¹¹The Saudi rule is that the country should in normal conditions maintain a cushion of 2 million b/d of unutilised capacity.

¹²Plasman, “The GCC Aluminum Sector and Other Heavy Industries”.

¹³Fuel oil typically sells at a lower price than crude oil. The fuel oil market has been shrinking significantly because of environmental constraints in the OECD countries. ENEL, the former Italian electricity monopolist, used to be a major purchaser to the point of being a price setter, but fuel oil-fired plants have been converted to natural gas.

¹⁴Estimates from a report of Moody's Investors Service, published on 6 October 2008. See The National (Abu Dhabi) of the same day.

¹⁵See Woertz, “Alternative Energy Trends and Implications for GCC Countries”. See also the interview with the Saudi Minister of Petroleum, Ali Naimi, in the French magazine Petrostrategies, March 2008; as well as his speech in Beijing on 7-8 November 2008, excerpts of which were published in MEES, 17 November 2008.

¹⁶International Energy Agency, “IEA Work for the G8 Summit, Hokkaido, Japan”, based on Energy Technology Perspectives 2008.

¹⁷Desalination is almost the only source of water for Qatar, the UAE and Bahrain. Saudi Arabia also makes considerable use of fossil (non renewable) water sources and enjoys limited rainfall in the Western region. None of the major cities in the region could survive without desalination.

¹⁸Discussion of the electricity sector in North African countries relies on research papers produced in ENCOURAGED, a cooperative research project led by the Energy Research Centre of the Netherlands (ECN) under the EC's Framework Programme 6. http://www.ecn.nl/en/ps/research-programme/energy-supply/encouraged/

¹⁹This is specifically (not exclusively) the case of Areva in France, and the recent conclusion of nuclear cooperation agreements between France, on the one side, and Egypt and Algeria, on the other, may be interpreted in this light.