Gulf Diversification Gas and Lithium: What the Data Shows

Gulf Diversification Gas and Lithium: What the Data Shows

This guide is current to 28 October 2026. It sets out how the Gulf’s oil and gas companies and governments are broadening their economies, and it uses only dated figures from company reports, central statistics offices, the International Monetary Fund (IMF), the U.S. Geological Survey (USGS), the International Energy Agency (IEA) and named data providers. Gulf diversification gas and lithium projects sit inside a year that changed the numbers: according to the IMF’s October 2026 World Economic Outlook, the war in the Middle East effectively closed the Strait of Hormuz in March 2026, and most Gulf economies are forecast to contract this year.

Readers will find the figures behind each pillar of diversification: Aramco’s earnings and gas program, ADNOC’s gas and LNG plans, the lithium work that has actually been announced in Saudi Arabia, the hydrogen projects in Saudi Arabia and Oman, and the size and spending of the sovereign wealth funds. A short section then reports official property-transaction statistics for the UAE, Saudi Arabia and Oman, with the definitions that make each series different. There is a dated timeline, a section on how to read the numbers, and answers to common questions. Nothing here is a forecast of our own; forecasts are quoted only with their source, date and assumption.

Gulf diversification gas and lithium: the 2026 starting point

Any account of Gulf diversification written before March 2026 needs revising. The IMF’s October 2026 World Economic Outlook, released on 13 October 2026 with data through 1 October, states that in March 2026 the war in the Middle East effectively closed the Strait of Hormuz and stranded Gulf oil and liquefied gas equal to about 20 percent of world consumption. The Fund’s baseline assumes that reopening resumes in March 2027, with a return to pre-war conditions broadly by October 2027, and that this means a gradual restoration of production, shipping, insurance and payment arrangements rather than an instant return to normal flows.

The IMF’s regional text says that Bahrain, Iraq, Kuwait and Qatar, the producers most affected by disruption to energy output and transport, are projected to contract by double digits in 2026 and expand by double digits in 2027. Saudi Arabia is described as somewhat less affected because it has more diversified export routes. On 1 October 2026 the IMF Managing Director told GCC finance ministers and central bank governors that the region’s economy is expected to contract in 2026 because of a sharp fall in hydrocarbon output and a marked slowdown in non-hydrocarbon growth, and that Bahrain, Saudi Arabia and the UAE, which have larger non-hydrocarbon sectors, were hit less hard. The same remarks say the war strengthens the case for the region’s transformation agendas, and that completing the GCC Railway and the Saudi Landbridge would substantially reduce the losses from a Hormuz closure.

Table 1. Real GDP growth, annual percent change. Source: IMF World Economic Outlook, October 2026, Annex Table 1.1.4; the last column compounds the 2026 and 2027 rates, for example UAE: 0.961 x 1.077 = 1.035. The IMF’s 2025 Saudi figure of 4.6% compares with 4.5% in the flash estimate from Saudi Arabia’s statistics authority (GASTAT) published in February 2026.

The compounding column shows what the forecast implies and nothing more. If the IMF’s assumptions hold, the UAE’s real output in 2027 would be 3.5 percent above its 2025 level, and Oman’s, the only GCC economy forecast to grow in 2026, 6.4 percent above. Qatar’s would be about where it was in 2025. Those results depend on the March 2027 reopening assumption, which is one of several assumptions the IMF lists about the path of the war.

Measuring Gulf diversification gas and lithium plans against non-oil data

Diversification is measured, in the first instance, by how much of output comes from outside oil and gas. Each statistics office defines this slightly differently, so the series should not be mixed. Saudi Arabia’s GASTAT splits real GDP into oil activities, non-oil activities, government activities and net taxes. The UAE’s Federal Competitiveness and Statistics Centre (FCSC) reports a non-oil share of real GDP. Oman’s National Centre for Statistics and Information (NCSI) reports oil activities, which include crude oil and natural gas, against non-oil activities.

Table 2. Non-oil indicators by economy. USD conversions: SAR 3.75, AED 3.6725 per dollar.

Three details in Table 2 matter for interpretation. First, the Saudi Q2 2026 result shows how the two halves of the economy behaved in the same quarter: oil activities fell 24.8 percent from a year earlier, while non-oil activities rose 0.9 percent. GASTAT’s contributions to growth were -5.4 percentage points from oil and +0.6 from non-oil, which is why total real GDP fell 4.7 percent. Second, the UAE’s non-oil share rose from 78.1 to 79.2 percent in the first half of 2026 even though non-oil output was weak in the second quarter (down 1.1 percent, which the Khaleej Times report attributes to regional developments and travel disruption affecting tourism, transport and trade), because oil-related output fell by more. A rising non-oil share therefore reflects both the growth of the non-oil side and the shrinkage of the oil side, and in 2026 the second effect is large. Third, applying 79.2 percent to the UAE’s H1 2026 real GDP of AED 961.9 billion gives non-oil real GDP of about AED 762 billion ($207 billion).

Official targets behind the numbers

Each state frames diversification through a published national plan. Saudi Vision 2030 was launched in 2016 to reduce oil dependence; the April 2026 annual report, as summarized by Gulf Daily News, says real GDP grew 4.5 percent in 2025, the private sector reached 51 percent of GDP and Saudi unemployment stood at 7.2 percent. Al Majalla’s review of the decade, citing the same period, puts non-oil exports at just over 22 percent of non-oil output against a 2030 target of 50 percent, and tourist arrivals at 123 million in 2025 against a 150 million target. The UAE’s We the UAE 2031 vision sets a goal of AED 3 trillion in GDP, according to a Khaleej Times report of September 2025 on FCSC data. Oman Vision 2040, presented in January 2019 and described by Asharq Al-Awsat as aiming for non-oil sectors to dominate GDP, concentrates on tourism, logistics, manufacturing, fisheries and mining. The Hydrom hydrogen program and the Oman Investment Authority, covered below, are two of its instruments.

For readers who want the property side of these national plans, our pages on Oman Vision 2040 and real estate, Oman and the UAE cover project-level information.

Aramco: earnings, spending and the 2026 production drop

Saudi Aramco is the largest single source of Gulf hydrocarbon income, and its reports are the clearest dated record of how the company’s finances moved. For the full year 2025, Aramco reported net income of $93.4 billion (SAR 350.2 billion), down 12.1 percent from $106.2 billion in 2024; adjusted net income was $104.7 billion, down from $110.3 billion. The press release attributes the decline mainly to lower revenue and other income related to sales, partly offset by lower operating costs and lower income taxes and zakat. Operating cash flow was $136.2 billion, free cash flow $85.4 billion, capital expenditure $52.2 billion and shareholder distributions $85.5 billion, so distributions were almost exactly equal to free cash flow (ratio 1.001). Gearing was 3.8 percent at the end of 2025. For 2026 the company guided capital expenditure to $50.0 to $55.0 billion.

Table 3. Aramco results. Sources: Aramco press release of 10 March 2026 (FY2025) and Aramco second quarter and half-year 2026 report of 4 August 2026.

Reading Table 3 as a set of worked comparisons: in 2025 the average realized price fell 13.7 percent (69.2 against 80.2) while production rose from 12.4 to 12.9 million barrels of oil equivalent per day, so profit fell because of price, not volume. In the first half of 2026 the pattern reversed. Realized price was 26.0 percent higher than in the first half of 2025 (90.1 against 71.5) and net income was 34.0 percent higher (65.2 against 48.7), yet production was 12.1 percent lower (11.0 against 12.5 million boe/d) and second-quarter output of 9.5 million boe/d was 25.0 percent below the first quarter’s 12.6 million. Aramco’s report says it sustained production and exports despite the unprecedented supply disruption through the Strait of Hormuz, using the East-West Pipeline, storage and export terminals, and that the Yanbu export terminal was repositioned as a hub for western-region shipments. Its gearing ratio rose from 4.8 percent at 31 March to 6.2 percent at 30 June 2026, and free cash flow for the first half was $30.9 billion after a $13.6 billion working-capital build in the second quarter.

These figures show why the IMF treats the Gulf’s hydrocarbon output and its non-oil activity as separate stories in 2026. Aramco’s profit in the first half of 2026 depended on price, while the volume available to sell was lower. The company also describes non-hydrocarbon activity in its reports: its 2025 results mention a planned significant minority interest in the Saudi AI company HUMAIN and a localization rate of 70 percent in procurement against a 75 percent target for 2030, and its mid-2026 report describes demonstration work on CO2 capture and synthetic fuels with Repsol in Spain.

Gas: Jafurah, Ruwais LNG and the North Field

Natural gas is the diversification pillar that sits closest to the existing business. It uses the same institutions and export infrastructure as oil, and it is treated by the companies themselves as a growth line. The 2026 reports give the most concrete numbers.

Table 4. Gulf gas projects, with dates. Units as published by each company.

Two sets of arithmetic help to size these numbers. QatarEnergy’s plan adds 65 million tonnes a year to a 77 million base, an increase of 84 percent. In remarks at the Qatar Economic Forum special edition in New York, reported on 22 September 2026, the same CEO said that two LNG trains at Ras Laffan were damaged, representing 17 percent of production capacity (about 13 million tonnes a year if applied to the 77 million base, our arithmetic), that repairs would take three years, and that Qatar was ready to resume normal operations within a few weeks of the Strait reopening. On the UAE side, ADNOC’s 2025 review reports oil reserves of 120 billion barrels (up from 113 billion, +6.2 percent) and natural gas reserves of 297 trillion standard cubic feet (up from 290 trillion, +2.4 percent), a five-year capital plan of $150 billion for 2026 to 2030, a crude production capacity target of 5 million barrels a day by 2027, and the ambition to be among the top five gas and LNG players by 2035. ADNOC Gas reported record 2025 net income of $5.2 billion, capital expenditure that nearly doubled to $3.6 billion and a plan to raise overall capacity by 30 percent by 2029.

Oman’s gas figures are smaller but appear in the national accounts: NCSI data for the fourth quarter of 2025 show the value of natural gas activities up 69.2 percent to OMR 858.7 million ($2.2 billion), against crude oil activities down 6.9 percent to OMR 2.65 billion. Gas was therefore 24.5 percent of oil-and-gas activity in that quarter (858.7 divided by 3,510), our arithmetic.

Where lithium fits in Gulf diversification gas and lithium plans

Lithium is the least developed of the pillars, and the public record is narrower than the older headlines suggested. The facts divide into the global market, what Saudi Arabia has announced, and the technical question of oilfield brine.

The global market in 2025 and 2026

The USGS Mineral Commodity Summaries 2026 (February 2026) estimate world lithium production outside the United States at about 290,000 tonnes in 2025, up 31 percent from 222,000 tonnes in 2024, and world consumption at 263,000 tonnes, up 20 percent from 220,000. Batteries accounted for 88 percent of end use. The same document records spot lithium carbonate in China rising from about $9,300 a tonne in January 2025 to about $10,300 in November, and an annual average U.S. contract price of $9,000 a tonne, 31 percent lower than in 2024. The USGS lists producing operations in Argentina, Australia, Brazil, Canada, Chile, China, Mali and Zimbabwe; no Gulf state appears among them. The IEA’s Global Critical Minerals Outlook 2026 (16 July 2026) says lithium prices more than doubled in the rebound across 2025 and early 2026 on demand from energy storage, that lithium companies cut investment by around 40 percent in 2025, and that supply deficits for copper and lithium are projected to persist through 2035.

What Saudi Arabia has announced

Aramco’s own announcement is the most reliable starting point. On 15 January 2025, during the Future Minerals Forum in Riyadh, Aramco and Ma’aden signed non-binding Heads of Terms for a proposed minerals exploration and mining joint venture. Aramco said it had found areas within its existing operations with lithium at up to 400 parts per million, that the venture would focus on lithium from high-concentration deposits and on cost-effective direct lithium extraction (DLE) technology, and that commercial production could potentially begin by 2027. It also said the Kingdom’s lithium demand was forecast to grow about twentyfold between 2024 and 2030, supporting about 500,000 electric-vehicle batteries and 110 gigawatts of renewables. The agreement is subject to closing conditions including regulatory approvals.

A month earlier, in December 2024, Saudi Arabia’s Vice-Minister for Mining Affairs, Khalid al-Mudaifer, said lithium had been extracted from brine samples from Aramco’s oilfields and that a commercial pilot would follow, led by the KAUST start-up Lithium Infinity (also called Lihytech) with Ma’aden and Aramco. In the same report, as relayed by Mining Technology from Reuters, he said extracting lithium from oilfield brine currently costs more than traditional salt-flat methods and could become commercially viable if lithium prices rise, and Aramco described lithium as an area of interest it was evaluating.

Table 5. Lithium milestones relevant to the Gulf.

Brine arithmetic

The concentration figure explains the cost remark. Parts per million by mass means 400 grams of lithium per tonne of brine, so one tonne of lithium metal needs 2,500 tonnes of brine (1,000,000 divided by 400) even with perfect recovery. Lithium carbonate is about 18.8 percent lithium by weight, so one tonne of carbonate contains 0.188 tonnes of lithium and needs about 470 tonnes of brine at the same assumption. Real plants recover less than 100 percent. This is the reason the extraction technology, and not the existence of brine, is the subject of the pilots, and it is consistent with the vice-minister’s remark on cost.

Within the public company material reviewed for this guide, lithium work is documented for Aramco and Ma’aden. ADNOC’s 2025 review covers crude capacity, gas, LNG, chemicals through XRG and 100 gigawatts of clean energy capacity by 2030 through Masdar. That is the information base this article uses for the UAE.

Hydrogen and ammonia: NEOM and Oman’s Hydrom rounds

Within Gulf diversification gas and lithium coverage, hydrogen differs from the other two in that the main Gulf projects are single, very large plants with published design capacities.

At NEOM, the green hydrogen company owned equally by ACWA Power, Air Products and NEOM is building 2.2 gigawatts of electrolyzers fed by about 4 gigawatts of solar and wind. Reports of January 2026 put construction at about 90 percent, and a July 2026 report says the renewable complex was due for completion by mid-2026, with first green ammonia targeted for 2027. The plant is designed for up to 600 tonnes of hydrogen a day, or 1.2 million tonnes of green ammonia a year, with Air Products holding an exclusive 30-year agreement to take all of the ammonia. The two capacity figures are consistent: ammonia is about 17.8 percent hydrogen by weight (3 x 1.008 divided by 17.03), so 1.2 million tonnes of ammonia contains about 213,000 tonnes of hydrogen, and 600 tonnes a day over 365 days is 219,000 tonnes. The reported project cost is $8.4 billion.

Oman created Hydrom in 2022 to run its land-allocation rounds. The CMS hydrogen guide, last updated 21 November 2024, records national targets of at least 1 million tonnes a year of renewable hydrogen by 2030, up to 3.75 million by 2040 and up to 8.5 million by 2050, and lists the awarded blocks.

Table 6. Oman green hydrogen rounds. Sources: CMS Expert Guide to Hydrogen (Oman), 21 November 2024; Hydrom, 2025; Oman Observer, 13 August 2025.

The four awarded capacities in Table 6 add up to 728,000 tonnes a year (200 + 150 + 178 + 200), which is 73 percent of the 1 million tonne national 2030 figure; these are announced project capacities with different dates, not output. In August 2025 Hydrom announced incentives for projects awarded in round 3: a 90 percent reduction in land lease fees during development, reduced base royalties in the initial production years and corporate tax exemptions for up to 10 years, with almost 100 registrations from industry players and consortia. The Hydrom site lists a statement-of-qualification window that closed on 31 October 2025.

Sovereign wealth funds: assets, spending and domestic roles

Sovereign wealth funds convert hydrocarbon income into other assets, and in the Gulf they also act as domestic investors. Their size and activity are documented by the funds themselves and by Global SWF, a data provider that tracks state-owned investors.

Table 7. Sovereign fund indicators. The “Gulf 7” in the Global SWF report are ADIA, ADQ, Mubadala, ICD, KIA, QIA and PIF; OIA is not in that list.

The reports distinguish between money invested abroad and money invested at home. Global SWF says PIF was the largest spender in 2025 at $36.2 billion, though the figure is dominated by a single acquisition (without the Electronic Arts deal, PIF would rank 12th), and that Mubadala ranked second at $33.7 billion in the same listing; in the first half of 2026, Mubadala was first with $15.2 billion. OIA’s report is explicit about the domestic side: its National Development Portfolio of about OMR 13.09 billion and its external Generations Portfolio of OMR 8.57 billion add to OMR 21.66 billion, so the domestic portfolio is 60 percent of that sum, and the OIA states that about two-thirds of its investments are in Oman. It reports OMR 2.4 billion injected into Vision 2040 projects through the third quarter of 2025, a Future Fund Oman with OMR 2 billion of capital, and named sectors including solar and wind, green methanol, LNG, water, mining, agriculture, logistics and storage and infrastructure at Duqm.

PIF’s filing, as reported by Arab News, also gives gross revenue of SAR 449.93 billion (up 9 percent), operating profit of SAR 77.9 billion (against SAR 34.6 billion in 2024) and cash and equivalents above SAR 350 billion. Net profit of SAR 65.1 billion is 14.5 percent of revenue (65.1 divided by 449.93), our arithmetic.

How the three property-relevant economies compare

The three economies that matter most for cross-border property buyers in the Gulf have different starting points, and the 2026 shock hit them differently.

Table 8. Side-by-side indicators from the sources cited in earlier sections.

The table also shows why the same event produced different outcomes. Oman is the only GCC economy the IMF forecasts to grow in 2026, at 4.1 percent, while the UAE and Saudi Arabia are projected to contract by 3.9 and 3.3 percent. The IMF’s regional text links Saudi Arabia’s smaller decline to diversified export routes. It does not explain Oman’s forecast, and this guide does not either.

Property data and Gulf diversification gas and lithium: what can be linked

Property statistics are the one place where diversification policy meets everyday transactions. The three official series below are not comparable with each other: they count different things, over different periods, and the 2026 figures cover a war year. They are reported here with definitions and without conclusions about future prices.

Dubai

The Dubai Land Department (DLD) published its first-quarter 2026 results on 9 April 2026. Total real estate transaction value was AED 252 billion ($68.6 billion), up 31 percent on the first quarter of 2025, with 60,303 transactions, up 6 percent. Investment transactions numbered 57,744 with a value of AED 173 billion ($47.1 billion); foreign investment was AED 148.35 billion ($40.4 billion), which is 85.8 percent of the investment value (our division), and the DLD counted 48,448 investors, of whom 29,312 were new. The quarter includes March 2026, the month in which the IMF dates the closure of the Strait. For 1 January to 29 September 2026, the figures below are W Capital’s analysis of DLD data, published by Zawya.

Table 9. Dubai transaction statistics, 2026 as of the dates shown. The Jan-Sep 2026 sales value is higher than the same period of 2024 (AED 380 billion against AED 374 billion, +1.6 percent) and is described by W Capital as the second-highest on record for the period.

Oman

The NCSI data, reported by the Oman News Agency on 29 July 2026, show first-half 2026 real estate transactions worth OMR 1.43 billion ($3.72 billion), up 5.4 percent. Sales contracts were OMR 688.0 million ($1.79 billion), up 12.2 percent, in 34,017 transactions (up 6.9 percent from 31,831), which works out to an average of about OMR 20,225 ($52,600) per sales transaction, across all registered sales. Mortgage contracts were OMR 740.2 million ($1.93 billion), down 0.3 percent in value but up 25.7 percent in number (13,383 against 10,647). Property titles issued were 101,700, down 8.0 percent. A later report on 22 September 2026 gives sales contracts of about OMR 954.1 million ($2.48 billion) for the first eight months, up 14.5 percent, and total traded value of about OMR 1.72 billion ($4.47 billion) to the end of July, up 7.7 percent from OMR 1.59 billion.

Saudi Arabia

The Ministry of Justice figures, as reported by Arab News on 6 July 2026, show first-half 2026 transaction value of SAR 82.2 billion ($21.9 billion) against SAR 169.4 billion in the first half of 2025, a fall of 51.5 percent; deals fell from 220,000 to 161,900 (-26.4 percent) and average price per square meter from SAR 2,217 to SAR 1,965 (-11.4 percent). Dividing value by deals gives an average of about SAR 507,700 per deal against SAR 770,000, a fall of 34 percent. The two experts quoted attributed the decline to regional geopolitics and government rebalancing measures, and one noted that moving Riyadh registrations to the Real Estate Registry affects year-on-year comparisons; both expected gradual improvement in the second half but not a quick return to record transaction levels.

Separately, Saudi Arabia’s Law on Real Estate Ownership by Non-Saudis was approved by the Council of Ministers on 14 July 2025, published on 25 July 2025 and entered into force on 21 January 2026, according to a King and Spalding note of 13 February 2026. It allows non-Saudis to own in zones to be designated, sets conditions for Makkah and Madinah, adds a transaction fee of up to 5 percent on disposals involving non-Saudis on top of the 5 percent real estate transaction tax, and requires registration with the Real Estate General Authority for the rights to be legally effective. That note says the implementing regulation had not been issued as of its date.

For project and price information in each market, see our guides on the Dubai real estate market, the 2008-2026 Dubai price history, the Oman real estate market outlook, property prices in Oman and a side-by-side comparison of Oman and Dubai.

How diversification and property statistics connect, and where the link is limited

The economic mechanism is straightforward to state and hard to measure. Non-oil activity employs people; a share of those people rent or buy; and public investment funds finance developments directly. The sources above show each step in the data, but they do not show causation, and 2026 shows how quickly the link can be interrupted. The UAE’s non-oil share of GDP rose to 79.2 percent in the first half of 2026, yet the FCSC reports non-oil activity fell 1.1 percent in the second quarter and real estate output grew only 2.3 percent in the half, compared with 7.9 percent growth for the real estate sector in 2025. In Saudi Arabia, non-oil activity grew 0.9 percent in the second quarter while registered property transaction value roughly halved. In Oman, transaction value rose while the economy was forecast to grow. Three economies, three different relationships between non-oil output and property transactions in one half-year.

What the data does support is narrower. First, official registrations measure transactions, not prices or rents; the Saudi series shows the gap between a 51.5 percent fall in value and an 11.4 percent fall in average price per square meter. Second, the data cover different property mixes: Oman’s average of OMR 20,225 per sale is spread across every registered sale whatever the property type, while Dubai’s series is reported as a total value across residential units, buildings and land plots. Third, projects named in diversification plans can change timetable: the NEOM ammonia start has moved to 2027, QatarEnergy’s first North Field East train is now expected in the first half of 2027, and the Hydrom round 3 material reviewed here covers the launch, the incentives and the qualification window rather than awards. Anyone reading property statistics against diversification headlines should hold those timing differences in mind.

Oman-specific rules affecting foreign buyers are covered in our guides on whether foreigners can buy property in Oman and Oman’s Real Estate Law 79/2025. Industrial and port areas that appear in the hydrogen and logistics plans are covered in the pages on the Duqm Special Economic Zone and Sohar.

A dated timeline, 2016 to October 2026

Table 10. Dated events used in this guide.

Reading the numbers: definitions that change the answer

Most apparent contradictions in Gulf diversification coverage come from definitions. Several recur in the sources used here.

• Net income versus adjusted net income. Aramco’s headline 2025 figure in its press release is adjusted net income of $104.7 billion; reported net income is $93.4 billion. Both are correct and both appear in the company’s tables. The difference is items such as impairment and held-for-sale remeasurement losses.
• Headline assets versus portfolio values. PIF’s end-2025 figure of SAR 4.54 trillion ($1.21 trillion) is total assets from its filing. The OIA’s headline of about OMR 23 billion is larger than the OMR 21.66 billion that its two main portfolios add to, so asset totals and portfolio values should be quoted as the separate measures they are.
• Real versus nominal GDP. The UAE’s 79.2 percent non-oil share is of real (constant-price) GDP. Saudi Arabia’s 17.1 percent oil and gas share is of nominal GDP. Oman’s 31.7 percent is the oil activities line over GDP at current prices for one quarter. They cannot be subtracted from each other.
• Capacity versus output versus target. Jafurah’s 2 billion cubic feet a day is a 2030 target; Tanajib’s 2.6 billion is a capacity expected in 2026; Hydrom’s 728,000 tonnes are announced project capacities; NEOM’s 600 tonnes a day is a design rate.
• Transactions in all categories versus sales only. The DLD’s AED 252 billion for the first quarter includes mortgages and gifts as well as sales; the AED 380 billion for January to September is sales alone, and W Capital’s AED 575 billion total for the same period adds mortgages and gifts.
• Dollar conversions. This guide uses SAR 3.75, AED 3.6725 and OMR 2.6008 per U.S. dollar. Some media reports round the OMR conversion differently, so small differences from other articles are expected.

Frequently Asked Questions

What does Gulf diversification gas and lithium mean in practice?

It describes the effort by Gulf governments and national oil companies to broaden income beyond crude oil. Gas is the most advanced line: Aramco’s Jafurah field produced its first shale gas in December 2025 and has a 2030 target of 2 billion cubic feet a day of sales gas. Lithium is at an early stage, with a non-binding Aramco and Ma’aden agreement from January 2025 and a pilot. Both sit beside hydrogen, minerals, tourism and finance.

Has lithium been produced commercially from Gulf oilfield brine?

No commercial production is documented in the sources checked. Saudi Arabia’s Vice-Minister for Mining Affairs said in December 2024 that lithium had been extracted from brine samples and that a commercial pilot would follow. Aramco’s January 2025 release says commercial production could potentially begin by 2027 under a venture with Ma’aden that remained non-binding. The vice-minister also said brine extraction currently costs more than salt-flat production.

How large is Gulf lithium compared with the global market?

The USGS lists no Gulf country among the world’s producing operations. It estimates world production outside the United States at about 290,000 tonnes in 2025. Aramco reports lithium of up to 400 parts per million in areas of its operations, which at full recovery would mean about 470 tonnes of brine for each tonne of lithium carbonate, so scale depends on processing volumes and recovery rates.

How much did Aramco earn in 2025 and in the first half of 2026?

Aramco reported 2025 net income of $93.4 billion and adjusted net income of $104.7 billion. For the first half of 2026 it reported net income of $65.2 billion and adjusted net income of $67.2 billion, helped by a realized crude price of $90.1 a barrel against $71.5 a year earlier, while production fell to 9.5 million barrels of oil equivalent a day in the second quarter.

What does the IMF expect for Gulf economies in 2026 and 2027?

The October 2026 World Economic Outlook forecasts Saudi Arabia at -3.3 percent and 7.9 percent, the UAE at -3.9 and 7.7 percent, and Oman at 4.1 and 2.2 percent for 2026 and 2027. It assumes Hormuz reopening resumes in March 2027, with pre-war conditions broadly by October 2027. The forecasts are conditional on that assumption.

Is non-oil activity growing in the Gulf in 2026?

The picture is mixed. In Saudi Arabia, non-oil activities grew 0.9 percent year on year in Q2 2026. In the UAE, non-oil GDP grew 1.8 percent in the first half but fell 1.1 percent in the second quarter. The IMF Managing Director said on 1 October 2026 that non-hydrocarbon growth had slowed markedly. Within this Gulf diversification gas and lithium context, the non-oil share of GDP can rise simply because oil output falls.

How big are the Gulf sovereign wealth funds?

PIF reported total assets of SAR 4.54 trillion ($1.21 trillion) at the end of 2025. The Oman Investment Authority reported about OMR 23 billion ($59.8 billion). Global SWF puts the seven largest Gulf funds’ 2025 deal spending at $119 billion, or 43 percent of the global total, and their first-half 2026 commitments at $53.9 billion.

What do official statistics say about Dubai, Oman and Saudi property in 2026?

The DLD reported first-quarter 2026 transactions of AED 252 billion, up 31 percent. W Capital’s analysis of DLD data puts January to September sales above AED 380 billion, 23.4 percent below the same period of 2025. Oman’s NCSI shows first-half total transaction value of OMR 1.43 billion, up 5.4 percent. Saudi Ministry of Justice data show first-half value of SAR 82.2 billion, down 51.5 percent. The series use different definitions.

Can the diversification data predict property demand?

Gulf diversification gas and lithium data do not establish a forecasting relationship in the sources reviewed. The same half-year shows a rising UAE non-oil share, a halving of registered Saudi transaction value and a rise in Oman’s. Statistics offices measure transactions rather than prices or rents, and the 2026 figures reflect a war year. This guide therefore reports the numbers and their definitions without a projection.

Where do hydrogen projects stand in Saudi Arabia and Oman?

At NEOM, the 2.2 gigawatt electrolyzer plant was reported about 90 percent complete in January 2026, with first green ammonia targeted for 2027. In Oman, Hydrom awarded four large blocks in rounds 1 and 2 with announced capacities totaling 728,000 tonnes a year and opened round 3 in April 2025 for land at Duqm. Gulf diversification gas and lithium coverage often leaves hydrogen out, but these are the two largest published programs.

Last checked: 28 October 2026. Sources: Aramco FY2025 results; Aramco Jafurah and Tanajib release; Aramco Q2 and H1 2026 results; Aramco and Ma’aden Heads of Terms; IMF World Economic Outlook, October 2026; IMF Managing Director remarks to GCC ministers; USGS Mineral Commodity Summaries 2026, lithium; IEA Global Critical Minerals Outlook 2026; ADNOC 2025 review; World Oil on ADNOC capital plan; The National on ADNOC Gas results; ADNOC Gas on Ruwais LNG; Oil & Gas Journal on QatarEnergy; Mining Technology on Saudi lithium pilot; SolarQuarter on NEOM Green Hydrogen; Fertilizer Daily on NEOM ammonia; CMS hydrogen guide, Oman; Oman Observer on Hydrom incentives; Hydrom; Arab News on PIF 2025 results; Oman Ministry of Finance on OIA results; Global SWF 2026 annual report; Khaleej Times on Gulf sovereign funds; TradeArabia on GASTAT 2025 GDP; Arab News on GASTAT Q2 2026; Gulf Daily News on the Vision 2030 report; Al Majalla on Vision 2030; Khaleej Times on UAE H1 2026 GDP; Khaleej Times on UAE Q1 2025 GDP; Gulf News on UAE 2025 GDP; Arab News on Oman NCSI 2025 GDP; Asharq Al-Awsat on Oman Vision 2040; Dubai Land Department Q1 2026; W Capital on Dubai sales via Zawya; Oman Observer on NCSI H1 2026 property data; Oman Observer on eight-month data; Arab News on Saudi Ministry of Justice data; King and Spalding on Saudi ownership law.