Ongoing geopolitical instability is intensifying the inherent trade-offs among the three pillars of the energy trilemma—security, equity, and sustainability. Despite decades of policy and scholarly attention, the drivers shaping how these priorities are balanced remain insufficiently understood. This gap is particularly evident in the Middle East and North Africa (MENA), where vast resource wealth underpins geopolitical significance but also generates structural vulnerabilities. This study addresses this gap by examining how resource endowment influences MENA’s navigation of the energy trilemma, while also investigating how governance and financial development moderate this relationship. Drawing on data from 14 MENA countries over 2000–2023 and employing Feasible Generalized Least Squares (FGLS), the study tests the direct and interaction effects of natural resources, governance, and financial development—alongside four control variables—on the energy trilemma. The findings show that while natural resources, governance, and financial development exert a consistent direct negative effect, their interactions yield positive and significant outcomes. This suggests that governance and financial development play complementary, synergetic roles in mitigating resource-related trade-offs, underscoring institutional strengthening and financial deepening as key policy levers for balancing security, equity, and sustainability. These results remain robust across alternative specifications, including Lewbel 2SLS with fixed effects and Driscoll–Kraay standard errors. Control variables display consistent signs across models: green innovation, energy intensity, and GDP support trilemma balance, whereas urbanization has negligible impact. The study concludes that targeted reforms in governance and finance can transform resource wealth from a structural liability into a driver of more secure, equitable, and sustainable energy transitions in MENA.
