Between the mountains and the sea crouch a cluster of huge tanks and winding steel pipes crowned by red and white striped chimneys. A guard in a golf cart circles the Fujairah power plant, US$2.1 billion (Dh7.71bn) worth of turbines, filtration tanks and computer control systems.
One of the newest plants in the UAE, it is capable of generating more than 2 gigawatts of power, enough for the needs of about two million people, and millions of gallons of drinking water. At the time of construction, when 7,600 men worked on the site, it was the second-largest operation of its kind in the world.
Expanding demand is requiring projects of a scale never before seen in the region as Arabian Gulf governments race to keep the lights on.
In the next five years, Middle East nations will have to bring 123.9GW of power online just to keep up with demand, which is growing in the region at a rate of 7.9 per cent every year, according to Arab Petroleum Investments Corporation (Apicorp).
In the UAE, it is projected to grow at a rate of 11 to 12 per cent.
"Many countries within Mena [Middle East and North Africa] have been struggling to meet fast growing demand for electricity, a consequence of high population growth, fast expanding urban and industrial sectors, increasing needs for air conditioning and heavily subsidised electricity tariffs," says Ali Aissaoui, a senior consultant at Apicorp.
"With continuing turmoil in parts of the region, catching up with unmet demand may be perceived as socially and politically more desirable," he adds.
The expansion of power-producing facilities in the region will cost $147.6bn by the end of 2017, $63.1bn of that in the Gulf alone, Apicorp predicts. Transmission and distribution networks are expected to tack on another $100 million or more.
But that all depends on whether the forecasters are correct.
"It's very hard to decide what's going to happen three or four years from now," says Frank Perez, the executive officer for power and water for Abu Dhabi National Energy (Taqa). "So you project the best you can and you try to meet it."
The Fujairah power plant is a Taqa project. It is situated north from the port and past a civil defence base that can deploy forces to the facility within 20 minutes if needed.
Security is a top concern - for protecting fuel supply and the facility itself.
Final arrangements are being made with Abu Dhabi's Critical National Infrastructure Authority on protecting the plant, which was completed in January last year.
In the plant's control room is a binder containing charts on reacting to potential troubles, such as a hydrogen fire or a terrorist attack. A display on the wall shows the plant's eight turbines are generating 1,458.3 megawatts of power and 115.6 million gallons of potable water that goes to Fujairah, the other Northern Emirates and to Abu Dhabi.
The threats can also come from the sea. Engineers here recall a long-lasting "red tide", or toxic bloom of algae, that hit Fujairah's coastline in 2009. A recurrence could affect the desalination process at the plant. And an oil spill from any one of the tankers channelling crude through the Strait of Hormuz has the potential to force the plant to shut down, if large enough.
By March, a pipeline 2.5km long will connect oil tanks at sea to fuel storage tanks on the coast.
The tanks are kept full with 10 days worth of fuel, a fallback in case natural gas supplies from Qatar are interrupted. Each tank has a capacity of 104,000 cubic metres and is about eight storeys high, with stairs running up the side.
The Fujairah power plant is intended not only to help to keep the lights on but also to spur population growth and boost agriculture.
But projects such as these are stopgaps until the completion of the Emirate's biggest industrial power project - its nuclear facility.
Once the four planned reactors, being built at a cost of $20bn, come online between 2017 and 2020, Abu Dhabi is likely to have more power than it needs. That means more will be available for export, not just to the other emirates, where it already sends power today, but to Oman and other Gulf nations connected by a regional grid.
"Long term, because you got a bigger and bigger fleet [of power plants], you have the ability then to optimise the dispatch and as you optimise the dispatch you find excess energy that you can use to supply other things," says Mr Perez.
