Meeting the Future Challenge

摘要

A third mandate, supporting social and economic development, is proving increasingly complex even for the most capable NOCs. Traditionally, success has been defined by ensuring that social spending does not drain capex budgets. Now, supplying adequate energy -- often at heavily subsidized prices -- to rapidly growing domestic markets, represents the critical challenge. Despite the success of Opec NOCs in other areas, many are turning to imports to meet domestic natural gas demand (as in Iran, Iraq, Kuwait and the UAE) and refined petroleum products (Nigeria, Iraq, Iran and Libya, and Venezuela, which has gone from a net export to net importing position).