An oil windfall offers Gulf states one last chance to splurge

corner of Saudi Arabia, not far from the mouth of the Gulf of Aqaba, sits a patch of mostly bare desert—the ostensible location of Neom. This would-be city is intended to be a and the showpiece of the kingdom’s attempt to diversify its economy away from oil. There has been talk of robots doing menial work, beaches lined with crushed marble and fleets of drones forming an artificial moon. One recent whim is to create the world’s longest buildings; like skyscrapers laid flat, these self-contained ecosystems would stretch for more than 100 miles. Estimates suggest the city could cost as much as $500bn.When this wild dream was first unveiled in 2017, financing it seemed near impossible. Now a torrent of oil money may allow Saudi Arabia to get things rolling. The world economy’s recovery from covid-19, and Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, have , triggering a staggering transfer of wealth from global consumers to fuel-exporting countries. From January to June, the price of a barrel of Brent crude rose from $80 to more than $120 (it is back below $100 today). The estimates that energy exporters in the Middle East and Central Asia will this year net $320bn more in oil revenues than it had previously expected, a figure equivalent to about 7% of their combined . Over the next five years, the cumulative surplus could reach $1.4trn.