Oil and Gas in the Gulf Recode Their AI Rules

Bahrain’s July 2025 AI policy is steering Middle East energy firms toward human-led, transparent, and accountable tech

18 Dec 2025

Artificial intelligence is creeping into the oilfields of the Middle East. Algorithms now guide drilling, monitor safety and track emissions. Regulators, belatedly, are catching up. In July Bahrain issued a broad policy on the use of AI, signalling that the region’s energy firms will face tighter expectations about how such tools are governed.

Bahrain’s General Policy for the Use of Artificial Intelligence, published on July 27th 2025, applies to all sectors. It stresses ethical use, transparency, data protection and “meaningful human oversight”. Though not aimed at oil and gas, it speaks directly to an industry built on data-heavy automation, where errors can be costly and opaque systems hard to defend.

The message is not hostile to innovation. Rather, it is conditional. AI is welcome so long as firms can explain how it works, document its limits and show who is accountable when it fails. For energy producers this has prompted a reassessment of tools that once ran quietly in the background. Systems used in drilling or safety management are now expected to be auditable and subject to clear oversight.

Across the region executives are watching Bahrain closely. Instead of waiting for rules to bite, many companies are mapping their existing AI systems, tracing data flows and tightening decision controls. This tends to favour fewer experiments and more robust deployments. AI programmes, long scattered across departments, are being pulled into enterprise-wide frameworks.

Suppliers are adapting too. Technology firms are adding governance and monitoring features to their platforms, hoping to ease compliance without slowing operations. Responsibility, in this view, is shared along the value chain, not dumped on the operator alone.

Investment patterns are shifting as a result. Companies are favouring AI that improves safety, reliability or environmental performance, such as predictive maintenance or emissions tracking. Riskier automation, especially where decision-making is hard to explain, faces tougher scrutiny. The result is a narrower but sturdier pipeline of projects.

None of this is painless. Applying abstract principles to complex industrial systems takes time, training and organisational change. Regulators have hinted at a proportional approach, focusing on higher-risk uses rather than blanket bans.

Even so, Bahrain’s policy is widely seen as a sign of things to come. As similar frameworks emerge, oil and gas firms that marry innovation with firm governance may discover that responsible AI is not just a compliance chore, but a competitive edge.