Saudi Arabia wants to avoid global detachment from oil
Saudi Arabia wants to keep fossil fuels at the center of the world economy for decades to come, and is using its diplomatic clout to stymie climate action. The New York Times article
In the desert gleams a futuristic research facility with an urgent mission: to make the Saudi oil-based economy greener, and fast. The goal is to quickly build more solar panels and expand the use of electric cars so that the kingdom ends up burning much less oil.
But Saudi Arabia has a very different view for the rest of the world. One of the main reasons it wants to burn less oil at home is to free up even more to sell abroad. It's just one aspect of the kingdom's aggressive long-term strategy to keep the world hooked on oil for decades to come and remain the top supplier as rivals drift apart.
In recent days, Saudi officials lobbied the UN global climate summit in Egypt to block calls on the world to burn less oil, according to two people attending the meeting, saying the summit's final statement "should not mention fossil fuels”. The effort has prevailed: After objections from Saudi Arabia and some other oil producers, the statement did not include a call for nations to phase out fossil fuels.
The kingdom's plan to keep oil at the heart of the global economy is playing out across the world in Saudi financial and diplomatic activities, as well as in the fields of research, technology and even education. It's a strategy at odds with the scientific consensus that the world must quickly move away from fossil fuels, including oil and gas, to avoid the worst consequences of global warming.
The dissonance touches the heart of the Saudi kingdom. The government-controlled oil company, Saudi Aramco, already produces one in 10 barrels of oil in the world and predicts a world where it will sell even more. However, climate change and rising temperatures are already threatening life in the desert kingdom like few other places on earth.
According to the Crossref database, which tracks academic publications, Saudi Aramco has become a prolific funder of research into critical energy issues, funding nearly 500 studies over the past five years, including research aimed at keeping gasoline-powered cars competitive or questioning electric vehicles. Aramco has collaborated with the US Department of Energy on high-profile research projects, including a six-year effort to develop more efficient gasoline and engines, as well as studies on improved oil recovery and other methods to boost Petroleum.
Aramco also operates a global network of research facilities, including a lab near Detroit where it is developing a mobile "carbon capture" device, a piece of equipment designed to attach to a car that burns gasoline, trapping gas greenhouse before they leave the drain. More broadly, Saudi Arabia has poured $2.5 billion into American universities over the past decade, making the kingdom one of the country's largest higher education funders.
Since 2016, Saudi interests have spent nearly $140 million on lobbyists and others to influence U.S. policy and public opinion, making it one of the top spenders on U.S. lobbying, the Justice Department revealed. by the Center for Responsive Politics.
Much of this spending has focused on boosting the kingdom's overall image, particularly following the 2018 murder of journalist Jamal Khashoggi by Saudi agents. But the Saudi effort has also extended to building alliances in American Corn Belt states that produce ethanol, a product also threatened by electric cars.
Behind the closed doors of global climate talks, the Saudis have been working to obstruct climate action and research, especially opposing calls for a rapid phase-out of fossil fuels. In March, at a United Nations meeting with climate scientists, Saudi Arabia, together with Russia, pushed to remove a reference to "human-induced climate change" from an official document, effectively disputing the fact, scientifically established, that the combustion of fossil fuels by man is the main engine of the climate crisis.
“People would like us to stop investing in hydrocarbons. But no,” said Amin Nasser, chief executive of Saudi Aramco, because such a move would only wreak havoc on the oil markets. The biggest threat is the "lack of investment in oil and gas," he said.
In a statement, the Saudi Energy Ministry said it expects hydrocarbons such as oil, gas and coal will "continue to be an essential part of the global energy mix for decades," but at the same time the kingdom has "made significant investments in measures to combat climate change”. The statement added, "Far from blocking progress in climate change talks, Saudi Arabia has long played an important role" in negotiations and in oil and gas industry groups working to cut emissions.
Saudi Arabia has said it supports the Paris climate accord, which aims to prevent global temperatures from rising by 1.5 degrees Celsius above pre-industrial levels, and intends to generate half of its electricity from renewable sources by 2030 The kingdom also plans to plant 10 billion trees over the next few decades and is building Neom, a carbon-free, futuristic city featuring fast public transport, vertical farms and a ski resort.
Saudi Arabia is hedging its bets. The government has invested in US electric vehicle company Lucid and recently said it plans to form its own electric vehicle company, Ceer. It is investing in hydrogen, a cleaner alternative to oil and gas.
However, the green transition at home has been slow. Saudi Arabia still generates less than 1% of its electricity from renewable sources, and it's unclear how it intends to plant billions of trees in one of the world's driest regions.
Meanwhile, the climate threat is becoming increasingly difficult to ignore. At current rates, human survival in the region will be impossible without continued access to air conditioning, researchers said last year.
Among researchers at the King Abdullah Petroleum Studies and Research Center, a space station-like complex powered by 20,000 solar panels where solar and wind projects or technologies such as carbon capture are discussed, the most immediate compromise is clear.
"If we continue to consume our own oil," said Anvita Arora, who leads the center's transport team, "we won't have any more oil to sell."
The Saudis and the corn belt
In early 2020, Rob Port, who hosts the "Plain Talk" podcast about North Dakota politics and current affairs, received a call from people representing the Saudi embassy. Would you be interested in interviewing a Saudi spokesman on oil markets?
The call came from Dan Lederman of the LS2 Group, an Iowa lobbying agency that has also worked for agricultural and ethanol groups, and one of the few lobbying firms that stood by the Saudis as others cut ties after Khashoggi's murder.
In May of the same year, Fahad Nazer, a spokesman for the Saudi embassy, participated in Port's podcast. Port said they were "talking about how they have the same interests as us," particularly an interest in "a thriving global oil market."
This initiative is part of a large effort by LS2group, on behalf of the Kingdom, which has reached states such as the Dakotas, Texas, Iowa and Ohio. For a fee of more than $125,000 a month, LS2group targeted local radio hosts, academics, event planners, sports industry officials, a former football player and the owner of a ski and snowboard club, according to the documents. filed with the Department of Justice.
Much of the campaign covered general topics, such as the history of close relations with the United States. Still, states like Iowa, the nation's top ethanol producer, could be fertile ground for Saudi views on electric vehicles, said Jeff M. Angelo, a former Iowa state senator who now leads a talk show and was contacted by Saudi representatives.
“Ethanol producers here in Iowa are saying the same thing: “Isn't it terrible that the Biden administration is forcing you to buy an electric car when we could make biofuel right here in Iowa, make money, support our farmers and be energy independent?” he said.
Another facet of Saudi Aramco's effort to perpetuate gasoline-powered cars is the research center near Detroit. There, researchers are working on an innovative device. Hooked up to an automobile, it would suck up some of the planet-warming carbon dioxide from exhaust before it could rise into the atmosphere and warm the world.
The prototype, developed by an Aramco laboratory, retains only a portion of the emissions. But it's part of an effort to keep petrol-powered cars competitive. Transportation uses two-thirds of the world's oil, so any shift away from petrol-powered vehicles would significantly impact oil demand.
It's a change Aramco doesn't want to see.
“Will electric vehicles ruin oil?” Khalid A. Al-Falih, Saudi Arabia's investment minister and former chairman of Saudi Aramco, said during an energy forum in 2019. "The answer is no."
Saudi Aramco has partnered with major automakers, such as Hyundai, to develop an "ultra-lean-burn" fuel for gas-electric hybrid vehicles that would still use petroleum. In addition, some Saudi Arabian-funded research questions electric vehicles.
In June, the Energy Department released the results of its six-year drive to research gasoline engines and cleaner fuels, which found that gasoline-powered cars "will dominate new vehicle sales for decades." Aramco and the Department also collaborated on technical papers on ways to increase oil flow from wells.
Prince Abdulaziz bin Salman, Saudi Arabia's energy minister, was incredulous. The International Energy Agency, set up half a century ago to ensure the security of global energy supplies, had just sounded the death knell of oil: it said the world should immediately stop approving new oil fields and gas, and quickly move away from petrol-powered vehicles, to avoid the worst effects of climate change.
Prince Abdulaziz likened this idea to a Hollywood movie. “It's the sequel to 'La La Land,'” he said at a press conference.
Saudi Arabia continues to explore for oil and gas. It pumps oil at an extremely cheap price of around $7.50 a barrel, beating out nearly all major rivals. Compared to fracking in the United States, for example, and the large methane emissions it entails, Saudi manufacturing is also cleaner than its competitors.
Last year, Saudi Arabia joined the United States, Canada, Norway and Qatar in a plan to further reduce emissions from drilling. Last year Saudi Aramco declared its intention to reach "net zero" by 2050, in essence pledging not to add more greenhouse gases to the atmosphere thanks to the extraction and production of oil. However, this commitment excludes the main source of global-warming emissions, those produced by the burning of oil.
“They see it as an advantage. They think that if buyers start discriminating between dirtiest barrels and cleanest barrels, Saudi Arabia looks much better than oil produced in the U.S. Permian Basin” or elsewhere, said Ben Cahill, senior fellow at the Center for Strategic and International Studies.
Saudi officials argue that a rapid transition to renewable energy and cleaner electric vehicles would lead to economic chaos, a view they say has been bolstered by recent global energy market turmoil amid tight supply and soaring of prices.
“The adoption of unrealistic policies to reduce emissions by excluding major energy sources will lead to unprecedented inflation and rising energy prices in the coming years, as well as rising unemployment and worsening serious social problems and security,” Saudi Arabia's Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman said at a US-Saudi summit in Jeddah in July.
Saudi Arabia's strategy is revealing itself in global climate talks.
In March, when Saudi Arabia and Russia pushed to remove a reference to "human-induced climate change" from a policy paper at a United Nations meeting, Valérie Masson-Delmotte, a French climate scientist who led the session, she opposed and won.
"There is no doubt that human influence has warmed the climate," he later said. "This is why I took the floor to argue."
The Saudi intervention was the latest example of what other negotiators describe as a years-long effort to slow progress by addressing scientific uncertainties, downplaying consequences, emphasizing the costs of climate action and delaying negotiations on procedural points.
Last year, Saudi Arabia successfully helped erase a sentence from a United Nations report calling for an active shift away from fossil fuels. The phrase "limits options for decision makers," a Saudi adviser to the kingdom's oil and mineral resources minister said, according to documents leaked by environmental group Greenpeace. “Omit the sentence”.
They have a strategic agenda," said Saleemul Huq, director of the International Center for Climate Change and Development in Bangladesh, "that is, they don't want anything to happen."
At the latest round of talks in Egypt, Saudi Arabia highlighted an alternative view, which relies on large-scale carbon capture and storage. By 2027, the Kingdom will build a facility capable of storing an amount of carbon dioxide equal to that emitted in a year by 2 million petrol cars.
This would be a breakthrough, because carbon capture has not yet been demonstrated on a scale. However, this is Saudi Arabia's way of preparing for a warming world, said Adel al-Jubeir, the kingdom's climate envoy. “In Saudi Arabia we are committed to being at the forefront”.
This is a machine translation from Italian language of a post published on Start Magazine at the URL https://www.startmag.it/energia/arabia-saudita-distacco-petrolio/ on Sun, 27 Nov 2022 06:14:42 +0000.