So, another year passes and the landscape in the oil and gas sector looks rather different to how it did 12 months ago, as we once again pull back the curtain to reveal the great and the good of the engineering, procurement and construction (EPC) segment in our annual list of the Top 30 EPC Contractors in the Middle East.If upstream operators were clutching their purse strings rather tightly as the summer months arrived in the Arabian Gulf in 2017, they might be loosening their grips a little this year. The oil price has risen more than 50% in the intervening period and it brings welcome headroom for developmentprojects to kick on once more.Our bigger players have once again landed some whopping deals right across the upstream industry, from major gas development tie-ups to midstream pipeline projects, while consolidation has also been the name of the game – as big beasts have combined to form even larger entities and it will be interesting to see, come 2019, how the playing field will look.As ever, the usual methodologies have been utilised to assess these firms such as the size of deals made, revenues earned and, also, as mergers and acquisitions have hit the headlines, future potential and scale. We hope you enjoy this ultimately idiosyncratic journey through the region’s mainEPC runners and riders.
