Lakshmi Narayanan, vice chair of Patel Family Office, Marc W. Gunderson, founder of MWG Enterprises, and Abdul Malik Alqahtani, Group CEO of AHQ Group.
A consortium comprising US and Saudi investors has entered the final stage of selecting a Gulf host country for a planned $5 billion integrated refinery and energy export corridor, with a final decision expected before the end of 2026.
MERA Oil, a newly launched private consortium backed by Texas-based MWG Enterprises, Patel Family Office and PWS, an associate company of Saudi Arabia's AHQ Group, on Wednesday said it had narrowed its search to three Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC) locations outside the Strait of Hormuz after three years of evaluating potential sites across the region.
The consortium said discussions with the three shortlisted jurisdictions had advanced significantly over the past two years, although it remains open to considering another GCC location should it present a stronger proposal that meets its infrastructure, route resilience and development timetable requirements.
The project is centred on the construction of a 200,000-barrel-per-day integrated refinery linked to deepwater port infrastructure, large-scale crude and refined products storage facilities, and marine export terminals.
