Major oil companies eye Middle East investments despite war — newspaper

LONDON, October 8. /TASS/. Major oil companies are looking for new investment opportunities in the Middle East despite the conflict between the United States and Iran, the Financial Times reported.

According to the newspaper, "executives from Shell, BP, TotalEnergies, ConocoPhillips and Chevron this week expressed their appetite for investing in the world’s most prolific oil-producing region, arguing that its plentiful, low-cost reserves outweighed the heightened risks."

This weekend, many of them will travel to Riyadh for the World Petroleum Congress. "For us as investors, I strongly believe the Middle East still has the cheapest oil. We need this oil, but we need to unlock the Strait of Hormuz by developing alternative routes, and we will do it," said Patrick Pouyanne, chief executive of France’s TotalEnergies.

"The biggest prize would be greater access to Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates, which possess some of the world’s largest and cheapest-to-produce hydrocarbon reserves," The Financial Times pointed out.

Meanwhile, Arab governments reassess global relationships and weigh the huge job of rebuilding facilities and investing in new infrastructure after the war has ended, the newspaper noted.