Estimating the demand for natural gas in the MENA region

This paper focuses on the MENA hydrocarbon-producing countries in the GCC and North Africa. We use annual data from 8 MENA region countries: Algeria, Bahrain, Egypt, Saudi Arabia, Qatar, Oman, Kuwait, and the UAE from 1990 to 2022. In cases where data is missing for select natural gas and commodity price, the missing values are estimated using simple interpolation methods. The country-specific natural gas demand data is sourced from the International Energy Agency (IAE) and reported in bcm. Population data is taken from the IMF and reported in Millions of people. The income-related data are sourced from the UN database. Natural gas and electricity prices are collected using various sources including IEA, OAPEC, IMF and other papers reporting prices (Amansih, 2017); Shebanah et al. (2020). Diesel prices are based on IEA data. Natural gas, diesel, and electricity prices are reported in constant dollars and calculated using the GDP deflator sourced from the World Bank. In the case of Egypt and Oman real prices, missing values for gas and electricity prices before 2003 are estimated by backwards extrapolation using regional averages. The matlab code used for the analysis is also provided.