To consolidate hydrocarbon resources, maintain or expand production and engage in the energy transition, MENA nations are expected to cumulatively spend more than $1 trillion on oil and gas services from this year to 2030

Rystad Energy expects national oil companies (NOC), international oil companies and independent exploration and production players in the Middle East and North Africa (MENA) region to be highly active in the workover and remediation market as the need for production enhancement grows and regional and global hydrocarbon consumption and demand continue to rise until the end of the decade.

Based on Rystad Energy’s latest database, Energy Demand Cube, we expect total energy demand in MENA to grow around 17% from approximately 13,300 terawatt-hours (TWh) to 15,600 TWh between this year and 2035. Fossil fuels will account for over half of energy transmitted across all demand sectors, with industry, power and transportation consistently requiring approximately three-quarters of total energy output across the same period.

Active well count steadily rising until 2030

To consolidate hydrocarbon resources, maintain or expand production and engage in the energy transition, MENA nations are expected to cumulatively spend more than $1 trillion on oil and gas services from this year to 2030. Service segments involving drilling & intervention and reservoir & stimulation – both of which are key segments for workover operations – will account for over $400 billion of total expenditure, driven by a rise in active wells throughout the same timeframe. We expect the active well count in the region to increase by almost 20% from around 78,000 wells this year to 92,000 wells by 2030, further indicating the region’s need to meet hydrocarbon demand.

Oman leading intervention and workover activity

As greenfield assets move towards the brownfield phase and mature assets continue to deplete across the region, well interventions, workovers and remediation services will be in high demand. This will lead to 17,000 well interventions taking place in 2030, up from approximately 13,000 this year, resulting in 20% intervention frequency across all active wells. Oman will have the highest activity for both light (rigless) and heavy (rigged) intervention categories, totaling around 30,000 interventions. This activity will be concentrated in the Fahud and Mukhaizna fields, and will account for approximately 25% of total interventions in the country from this year to 2030 further illustrating the high depletion rates in Oman’s assets. Additionally, Oman will account for 25% of active wells in MENA and around 27% of total interventions. This also explains why Oman is accelerating its move towards low-carbon energies – mainly in the hydrogen sector – to become less reliant on aging oil and gas fields with several green hydrogen projects in the pipeline. Finally, Saudi Arabia will see its activity focused on its legacy onshore fields such as Ghawar and Khurais. Offshore interventions in Saudi Arabia are expected to take a larger portion of activity beyond 2030.

Light (rigless) interventions will see the most activity

The drive to enhance production will result in rising expenditure in the intervention and workover market, reaching $37 billion cumulatively between this year and 2030 across MENA. As always, Saudi Arabia will take the lead with over $10 billion of this total. Despite there being more workover and intervention activity in Oman, Saudi Aramco’s premium contracts and prices – due to the company’s demand for top-tier equipment and personnel – will result in the highest spending on intervention, followed by the UAE ($3.3 billion) and Oman ($2.8 billion).

Moving towards the end of well lifecycles, Rystad Energy research estimates a steady rise in the number of well abandonments, where we expect over 1,300 wells to be plugged and abandoned in 2030, rising from 950 this year averaging close to 60 abandonments per year – double the plug & abandonment (P&A) rate between 2017-2023. Despite P&A doubling, we expect expenditure in the industry to decline due to a transition towards cost-efficient, rigless P&A activity further showing why light interventions will outpace and outgrow rigged ones.

The workover and remediation market stands as a vital sector for regional NOCs, with projections indicating robust activity driven by the imperative to enhance production amid escalating hydrocarbon consumption.