The recent fall in oil prices made oil and gas companies to rethink their production strategies and optimize their expenses, while at same time, optimally extract oil in a cost-effective way. A combination of rising oil demand and declining supply from the conventional sources is drawing global attention to the vast heavy-oil resources. Heavy oil has high viscosity and is commonly developed with steam-based processes which, in most cases, burn fossil fuel to generate the required steam. However, tightening constraints on fuel, water, and the environment are some of the factors currently fuelling the interests to enhance the traditional steaming operations. Generating steam using solar energy has overcome the challenges of steam been produced from burning of natural gas. The most common challenge is that steam production using natural gas burnt facilities are expensive and the cost of natural gas required to generate steam is considerably high. The use of renewable energy system is the best alternative to achieve reduction of the high cost of energy supply and carbon emission. Due to the heavy nature of the oil explored from Oman, the cost of drilling is quite high and also involves a lot of fossil energy to heat up the heavy oil to reduce its viscosity, reduce the pressure of the system, ease the flow and make it light before drilling. A new technology know as the Enhanced Oil Recovery is been proposed using solar energy instead of the conventional fossil energy, in order to save cost and the same time, make the environment eco-friendly. This paper presents prospects of solar farm steam generator-based technology, in the southern part of Oman, where the requirement of steam for oil exploration is high. The Amal and Amin oil fields were used as case studies. The solar steam generator model was analyzed considering some of the technical designs in the enhanced oil recovery process, compared to traditional schemes used for oil extraction. With installation of solar based steam generators, gas consumption for steam generation and environmental pollution would be reduced substantially. Also, some of the benefits and challenges of the concentrating solar power steam technology employed were highlighted. Moreover, the opportunities the solar farm could offer to the Sultanate in general were discussed.

Nowadays Climate change is the main dilemma urging the world actions to mitigate it, mainly through fossil fuel independency and energy consumption management. Energy deficient performance of the building envelope in residential buildings is a major driver increasing energy consumption rates. Since the cooling loads and lighting are on top of the electric consumption rates in housing, then a key mitigator to improve the energy efficiency performance of a building envelope is the adequate management of energy flow through the household by the passive strategy (cooling and daylighting) techniques to acquire the best advantage of the local climate. Selecting the high standard housing segment represented in new Gated communities, spotting the gap between the formal and new market criteria and how it is widely spreading with no considerations to their building envelope energy deficiency performance and accumulation of energy consumption loads urges the need to take the High standard housing into an actual high standard not only per income level, but also in its energy high performance aligning with global aspect. Cases studied were analyzed to observe their passive cooling techniques implemented in the Building Envelope to improve the energy efficiency performance. Then one base case study (SODIC EAST-MVvilla) is selected and adapted with previously induced eight passive cooling techniques then simulated with DesignBuilder software to assess the energy consumption, thermal performance, and CO2 production of the building. The study resulted in significant electric consumption annual decrease by 41% thermal comfort annual improvement by 66% that lead to a decrease in CO2 production by 41% annually and that is when a building improves its energy efficiency utilizing the building envelope using passive cooling strategies.