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PART TWO
OAPEC Activities in 2012
Chapter 3
OAPEC Sponsored Ventures
In 2011 and 2012 global financial crisis implications, and the geopolitical
events, continued to weigh heavily on the Middle East and North Africa
(MENA) region. As a result, the activities of certain OAPEC sponsored
ventures, particularly the Libya-basedAPSCO, were affected. The company
lost some of its equipment and its properties were exposed to damages due
to the events witnessed by Libya. Once the events came to an end, the
company formed a number of committees to assess the damages.
Since decades, OAPEC sponsored ventures have faced severe challenges
due to the nature of their activity. They have always confronted sharp
competition by the major global players of similar activity, on one part, and
the difficulty in penetrating Arab markets, on the other part. Despite these
circumstances, sponsored ventures exerted intensive efforts over the two
years, which culminated in upgrading their performance and developing
their business. OAPEC sponsored ventures were not severely affected by
those circumstances. Yet, they became more determined to overcome the
difficulties, capitalizing, in the first place, on utilizing and investing their
expertise acquired over the past decades to step forward towards realizing
more successful achievements.
In spite of the difficulties still facing the investment climate in the
Arab region, in general, the economies of Arab petroleum producing and
exporting countries, achieving good economic growth rates over the past
years, had a positive impact on OAPEC sponsored ventures. They managed
to benefit from this growth in fostering their activities and maintaining
their foothold in their core business, such as investment in energy sector
(APICORP), maritime transport market (AMPTC), the shipbuilding and
repair market (ASRY), and the drilling and geophysical exploration market
(APSCO and its subsidiaries).
OAPEC sponsored ventures have gone forward with confidence in
realizing the objectives set out by their OAPEC member owners. This
is reflected in the good financial results achieved by those companies in
