An energy crisis and geopolitics are creating a new-look Gulf

roughly 1m football fans will descend on Qatar for the World Cup, many of them travelling via neighbouring cities such as Dubai and Abu Dhabi. They will find a Gulf in the midst of a $3.5trn energy bonanza, courtesy of . Western politicians facing a cost-of-living crisis are once again paying homage to the royalty of the fossil-fuel economy. Olaf Scholz, Germany’s chancellor, is due to visit this week; in July President Joe Biden fist-bumped Muhammad bin Salman (), the de facto ruler of Saudi Arabia, a country he had branded a pariah for its human-rights abuses.As we explain this week, the latest is taking place alongside deeper trends: a re-engineering of global energy flows in response to Western sanctions and climate change, and the remaking of geopolitical alliances in the Middle East as it adapts to a multipolar world in which America is no longer a reliable guarantor of security. The result is a new-look Gulf that is destined to remain pivotal for decades to come. Whether it will be a source of stability, though, is far from clear.