Oman’s largest wind farm will not send a single megawatt-hour to the national grid.
Riyah 1 and Riyah 2 are going up inside the southern part of Petroleum Development Oman’s Block 6 licence area, 18 turbines each, 234 MW combined. All 36 turbine sets reached the sites in May after 300,000 freight revenue tonnes moved through the Port of Duqm. OQ Alternative Energy holds 51 percent of the JV and TotalEnergies 49. Every megawatt-hour goes to PDO under long-term power purchase agreements. OQAE says commercial operation remains on track for December 2026.
Oman’s utility-scale wind procurement runs a slower clock. Nama PWP’s 2025 annual report, reported by Zawya Projects in May, lists three wind IPPs at Duqm (Ras Madrakah), Mahout and Sadah, tendered in the fourth quarter of 2025 and worth roughly 1,120 to 1,260 MW together. None has been awarded yet. Sadah is scheduled for commercial operation in Q4 2027, Mahout in Q1 2028. The one project already awarded in this cycle, 120 MW at Jaalan Bani Bu Ali to EDF power solutions, Al Khadra Partners and OQAE, connects in Q3 2027.
Line those dates up and an oil field gets its wind roughly three quarters before the current IPP round delivers its first megawatt.
My read is that the ordering is structural. An industrial offtaker controls the counterparty, the land, the connection point and the demand curve inside one fence, so the project skips the tender cycle, the evacuation lot and the tariff negotiation that pace grid-connected wind farms in the region. Oman is proving the shortcut at 234 MW.
Which MENA industrial operator signs the next behind-the-fence wind PPA, and does it beat its own national procurement round to commissioning again?
