Undercover in Saudi Arabia's secretive program to keep the world burning oil
climate-reporting.org
climate-reporting.org
https://www.cnbc.com/2023/10/09/aramco-siemens-energy-launch...
https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2023-10-25/aramco-pl...
https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2023-10-25/aramco-pl...
It's also spending $270 billion by 2030 on low-carbon energy initiatives
https://oilprice.com/Latest-Energy-News/World-News/Saudi-Ara...
Edit: typo. billion, not trillion
Article says $270 billion, not trillion
https://oilprice.com/Latest-Energy-News/World-News/Saudi-Ara...
Several years ago an acquaintance who worked in the oil industry joked about how he was saving the planet by taking a job in Saudi Arabia to develop their nonexistent fracking industry. He said the long-term effect would be helping them stop burning crude for their electricity needs, by pivoting to natural gas.
Extremely high temperatures reduce efficiency. Extremely low temperatures at night mean high stress from thermal cycling. The desert is full of dust which reduces efficiency.
Finally, the desert is not just a mass of sand, it's a full on ecosystem that experiences impacts from laying large farms on top of it.
Sand is operating in reverse as it absorbing heat near freezing and releasing it as temps get above freezing...
Sorry I did have quite a bit of physics once upon a time..
> it's a full on ecosystem that experiences impacts from laying large farms on top of it.
You think that the Saudi government, with the extremist clerics holding a knife to their throats, their citizenry on life-long unemployment welfare, with their drive to continue to make climate change worse, who spill oil on the sand and billow smoke into their skies, give one tiny iota of a shit about a delicate desert ecosystem?
If you screw up the ecosystem, the result is haze, mist, and other obstacles to solar power, not to mention animal and human interference.
From what I understand, Saudi oil produces less carbon than other types of oil. So the Saudis are expecting they will be among the last to shut down - which a reasonable assumption.
Otherwise you would be shutting down a lower carbon fuel in favor of higher carbon fuel.
They are (with solar). Look at the Al Khafji Plant in Saudi's Vision 2030 [0]
It takes time to build this stuff. The old guard was much more pro-oil and status quo than MBS, and he only finished purging them by 2018-19. It'll take a decade for their projects to start popping up.
They are late in the PE/VC game.
Abu Dhabi - the Emirates they controls the UAE - has been very active in investing in Hydrogen Energy and Solar, which makes more sense in an industrial setting.
They've been very active in investing billions in Hydrogen tech in India via Tata Power, Reliance, and Adani in conjunction with Japanese companies [0][1][2]
Saudi only started dipping their toes in the space after MBZ took MBS under his wing and mentored him about the Abu Dhabi way [3]
[0] - https://www.rechargenews.com/energy-transition/finance-giant...
[1] - https://www.offshore-energy.biz/uae-and-india-to-collaborate...
[2] - https://www.forbes.com/sites/simranvaswani/2022/04/11/adani-...
[3] - https://www.wsj.com/articles/frenemies-saudi-crown-prince-mb...
These exports would be competitive within only a short shipping radius. North Africa is closer to Europe; China has its interior; on the top-10 list I only see India, Pakistan and possibly Turkey [1].
[1] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_oil_imp...
That being said this will be decided by whichever technology is cheaper (including things like the risk premia of being potentially cut off from supplies), regardless of agitation either way. Unless somehow, magically, we can force everyone to pay up for their share of damage caused by temperature change - which is extremely far away from being realizable. UN Security Council cannot agree on much more obvious things, like deciding in specific cases that bombing civilians is actually illegal.
I mean, they might have realized that oil will eventually stop making current levels of profits, and thus they want to diversify.
But that doesn't mean they don't want to postpone this moment as far as possible into the future.
You're right, they are earnestly pursuing both, for exactly the reasons you describe: pure profit.
But Saudi Arabia has implied that they are pursuing green tech for environmental reasons, which is absolutely antithetical to the stance of "let's burn every single drop of oil we can before it stops being profitable."
"... lobby against government subsidies for electric vehicles in countries around the world."
invalidates the claims they have made to be earnestly pursuing renewables. Personal transportation is a huge consumer of nonrenewable energy today, and EVs are the shortest path to transitioning personal transportation to renewable energy.
Why would it? My understanding is that royal family promotes this particular brand of religion because it helps them maintain social control. It also makes it harder to infiltrate their country with external influences.
After that event, the royal family struck a deal that gave the extremists more influence in exchange for holding onto power...we're talking women banned from television, cinemas shut down, extreme gender segregation, etc. It was that way until MBS, a relatively liberal person, ascended and whisked some power away from the religious police and extremists, with an iron fist, of course.
Despite their vast oil wealth, Saudi really lacks the human capital to keep the gears going without the help of foreign expats. If the oil wells hypothetically dry up tomorrow...the country is in deep trouble.
(there's an alternative line of thought that says "you gotta follow the leader because a leaderless state is even worse", and that line of thought is generally prevailing in muslim countries; that's how one would justify having some out of the blue family running Saudi Arabia, with its two out of three most important Muslim holy places)
Because they have a very active police state working to prevent a Grand Mosque Seizure 2.0 or worse.
This is a major reason Saudi troops are in East Yemen and working with the American CJTF-OIR in Syria.
If this is true, this sounds to me very shortsighted.
Our modern society will always require oil as the foundation for a thriving chemical industry. Digging and burning it all up means when its scarcity and price increases SA has nothing to sell.
Norway does it better. This are blocked extraction in the touristic Lofoten islands. If they really need it then can decide otherwise, with less disruptive tech in the future.
Not even that: higher prices work as incentive to develop alternatives. True for oil as energy source (renewables), fuel (synthetic fuels, H2 etc) and chemical feedstock (eg. bio-based polymers).
Alternatives will then develop to the point that oil simply isn't attractive any more. Or that a price at which it would be (to buyers), is below the cost of extraction. Perhaps leaving some niche applications, but demand will drop overall.
In short: it's a matter of time before production of (fossil) oil becomes unprofitable outside those niche applications. Heck, if environmental damage were included in the cost, it already is (ehm.. has been for a long time).
So there will be a "peak oil profits". Probably around the same time as peak oil - which may already have passed.
If you let a “free market” set oil prices for the past 60+ years instead of OPEC, then I’m sure the world would be a whole 1 degree warmer by now.
That other countries are not any more concerned is not a reason to excuse them. It should rather inspire us to do better. I don't know if there's a way to live without oil, and I understand that countries may want to keep their privileged position. Yet I feel disgusted by this behavior. This is irresponsible.
(not a native speaker so sorry for any errors)
Ultimately a carbon tax must make its way to fall onto the people that get the fossil fuels out of the ground. Those extractors can then pass it on to their customers, so it is neutral to them, except for the reduction in demand. However paying that tax frees them from the status of being the evil cabal that is destroying the planet.
A carbon tax also fits well into the capitalist, "don't tell me what to do" self-indulgent society we live in. Want to drive your giant diesel-chugging boat out to try and catch a fish? Sure, go ahead, just pay the tax when you fuel up. Then enjoy yourself, and tell your tree hugging buddies that you've done your bit for the environment, as the carbon tax has gone to offset your damage.
economic: This far in we haven't made any measurable progress against carbon goals, but the feds have captured billions in taxes. It's been spent on political programs to selectively buy voters. BC has the highest carbon tax in the country and emissions have increased 10% over the past 3 years, and 5 of the last 7.
Seeing how people bitch and moan about the price of gas every time it goes up (even when it was cheaper than it was a year prior), and how it has sparked multiple revolts around the world, like the yellow vests in France, I wouldnt hold my breath that people will happily accept taxing gas in accordance to its externalities, regardless of whether it is the right thing to do.
I wish it was different, but we are still a ways off from being independent on oil.
Why point the finger there when we could all look in the mirror and point instead?
Pfft, it's not like the US oil companies have lobbied for subsidies and to quash the whole climate issue for decades whilst breaking ground on new fossil fuel sources, lol.