When partnership means different things

“If hydrogen production and localisation stay in producer countries, Europeans lose jobs. And unemployment leads to fascism.”
The European panellist's words hung in the air during our discussion at Oman’s Green Hydrogen Summit, cutting through the usual diplomatic niceties that characterise these gatherings. It was the kind of honest statement rarely voiced in polished conference halls, where we typically speak of win-win partnerships and mutual prosperity without interrogating what those phrases actually mean. My response was immediate: “We learned our mistakes from oil and gas. We don’t want opportunities to be missed. Local jobs matter more.”
This brief exchange revealed the essential tension underneath the entire energy transition, one that goes far beyond technical specifications or shipping logistics. The panellist's concern wasn’t unfounded. Across Europe, far-right movements are gaining ground on the back of economic anxiety and hollowed-out manufacturing sectors, and the green transition looks to many Europeans like another threat: tomorrow’s industrial jobs created elsewhere while Europe becomes merely a consumer of green molecules produced abroad. It’s a genuine fear rooted in real economic pain.
But here’s what that perspective fundamentally misses. Oman has lived through this exact dynamic for generations, only from the other side. For decades, we extracted oil and gas from beneath our land and shipped it overseas, watching other nations capture everything that mattered: the valorisation, the manufacturing value, the technology development, the high-skilled engineering jobs, the economic complexity that transforms societies. We sold crude and bought back refined products. We exported gas and imported the petrochemicals and plastics it could have produced here. The revenue flowed into national coffers, certainly, but the transformative opportunities to industrialise and diversify our economy beyond resource extraction largely flowed to Europe, to Asia, to America.
The green hydrogen transition represents something fundamentally different: a chance to break that pattern from the beginning. When Oman commits to hydrogen production, we’re talking about the entire value chain that follows: manufacturing electrolysers domestically, developing deep engineering expertise, constructing green ammonia and methanol plants, establishing green steel production facilities, building a maritime bunkering industry for ships that will cross our waters. This isn’t protectionism or resource nationalism. This is applying lessons learned from watching a century of wealth extraction that left behind too little industrial capacity.
The question my fellow panellist raised does deserve serious consideration, though. What does genuine partnership actually look like when interests conflict? Is it partnership if one region produces molecules cheaply while another monopolises all value-added manufacturing? Or is real partnership something more uncomfortable: accepting that both regions will compete for the same industries, that guaranteed outcomes no longer exist for anyone, that the economic certainties of the past century are genuinely ending?
Europe’s anxieties about employment and social cohesion are legitimate and serious. But so are Oman’s ambitions to industrialise value after generations of exporting raw resources while importing finished goods. The energy transition simply cannot recreate the same extractive economic patterns, where the Global South provides raw materials, even renewable ones, while the Global North retains its monopoly on manufacturing, innovation, and high-value jobs.
Perhaps genuine partnership means something harder than we typically admit: both regions competing to innovate faster, invest smarter, and build better industries. That’s uncomfortable because it means Europe must compete for industries it once took for granted, and it means accepting that Oman’s gain isn’t necessarily Europe’s loss but rather a rebalancing that’s long overdue. But asking Oman to forgo industrialisation so European factories stay comfortable isn’t partnership. It’s just the old oil and gas playbook dressed in climate credentials.
We learned our mistakes from oil and gas. This time, we’re keeping the opportunities.
The writer is an Omani environmental strategist advancing Middle East climate action and women’s leadership. Follow her on LinkedIn: @RumaithaAlBusaidi