Muscat faces up to oil twilight

The Omani government’s focus is reluctantly shifting to managing output decline

State-controlled Petroleum Development Oman (PDO), producer of some two-thirds of Oman’s oil, announced In late May the near-completion of its flagship Yibal Khuff enhanced oil recovery (EOR) project. The tone was celebratory but could equally have been valedictory. The international energy landscape and the government’s fiscal position have shifted dramatically in the seven years since the scheme’s launch. It is hard to envisage either the parastatal or its foreign counterparts in the country’s upstream ever again embarking on such a costly, emissions-heavy venture for such a small output payoff. The sultanate’s energy minister, Mohammed al-Rumhy, openly conceded in an interview last month