Trust before pipelines: Why credibility has become the Middle East’s most valuable energy asset

When Houthi attacks on commercial shipping in the Red Sea forced vessels to reroute around the Cape of Good Hope and the Gaza war intensified regional instability, attention naturally focused on rising freight costs, supply-chain disruptions and oil-price volatility. Yet another consequence received far less attention: every disruption weakened confidence in the political and institutional environment on which long-term regional energy cooperation depends.

The Middle East has never lacked energy resources. What it increasingly lacks is the strategic confidence necessary to transform those resources into durable regional partnerships.

As the region enters an era of electricity interconnections, hydrogen corridors, digital energy systems and cross-border infrastructure, another factor is becoming equally decisive: credibility.

The future of Middle Eastern energy cooperation will depend not only on who possesses resources, but also on who can convince neighbours, investors and markets that cooperation will remain reliable despite political uncertainty.

In this sense, the region is entering a new phase of energy diplomacy.

Traditional energy diplomacy concentrated on securing markets, protecting export routes and negotiating production agreements. Today’s energy transition requires something fundamentally different.

Electricity grids cannot simply be switched on and off according to political moods. Hydrogen supply chains require decades of coordinated investment. Carbon capture projects demand regulatory compatibility. Digital electricity systems rely on continuous data exchange and cybersecurity cooperation.

Unlike oil tankers, these systems cannot function without sustained institutional confidence.

This emerging reality calls for what may be described as Energy Trust Diplomacy: the deliberate use of political credibility, institutional reliability and technical cooperation to reduce uncertainty and enable long-term regional energy integration.

Trust, therefore, is not an alternative to geopolitics. It is the mechanism that allows geopolitics to be managed.

Figure 1 illustrates this logic. Rather than viewing political risk as the inevitable end of regional cooperation, the framework shows how credibility can interrupt the cycle linking geopolitical tensions to investment uncertainty and fragmented energy markets. By strengthening contractual reliability, regulatory harmonisation and technical cooperation, governments can reduce perceived risks without eliminating political differences altogether.

The geopolitics of energy reconstruction: Who will rebuild the Middle East’s damaged energy systems?

Economic incentives alone have rarely been sufficient to sustain regional energy cooperation.

The Eastern Mediterranean provides one of the clearest examples. Significant offshore natural gas discoveries created expectations of extensive regional cooperation and new export corridors. Yet unresolved maritime disputes, competing strategic alignments and the absence of sustained political confidence have repeatedly slowed projects that appeared commercially attractive.