Just an opinion: I think you have to look around your environment and see where your energy sources are.

Take the middle east for instance: They have crude oil, natural gas from their oil wells, plenty of sunshine, and wind.

In places like Venezuela & Iran ... there's an abundance of LNG & LPG. They're oil producing nations but don't have refining capacity but do have these different flammable gasses coming off the wellheads. A lot of their vehicles are built to run on LNG & LPG.

Desalinization plants and power generating plants utilize the oil resource in some way.

They could build a big solar still to purify their water. You know ... use solar energy to evaporate the seawater and then condense it back to liquid form. They could build a dual purpose solar furnace that produces electricity and purified water.

Iran also has the basic materials to run a nuclear energy plant. They have to mine the radioactive material and then refine it ... but it's a doable plan. ( This one is controversial.)

Point being: It can go all different kinds of ways. It all depends on what you have on hand to work with. It's a wide open field of opportunities.