Undercover in Saudi Arabia's secretive program to keep the world burning oil
climate-reporting.orgI don’t understand why the Saudis aren't spending their billions to develop synthetic fuels and direct air capture. Their cloudless desert is a great place to put solar panels to power synthetic fuel plants and they already have the refineries and shipping facilities to distribute carbon neutral fuels.
> Their cloudless desert is a great place to put solar panels
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.
I was with you 100% until this point:
> 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?
The point is you can’t rely on the desert to simply be sunny.
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.
Oil is more than fuel. We have to solve a lot more problems than fuel before we can stop pumping oil.
Sounds like it would be good for solar thermal plants then. Also, burning fossil fuels will destroy a much larger ecosystem: earth. I think we can compromise a bit here. Besides, how many plants would really be needed to disturb the desert eco system? It's a fairly large area.
To put it another way sand is not a good PCM material for example in green houses they use calcium chloride and sodium sulfate decahydrate to absorb heat during day and then give off that stored heat at night.
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..
They plan to produce synthetic fuel by 2025
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
> It's also spending $270 trillion by 2030 on low-carbon energy initiatives
Article says $270 billion, not trillion
Woops, typo. Thanks. Edited
We're talking about a nation that burns unrefined crude oil for power generation:
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.
I learned of this several years ago and thought it was a joke. But no, apparently this is a real thing. There is a whole industrial science around preventing the turbines from getting gummed up from the fact that raw crude is burned in them.
They could do even better than that: they could plant trees. They could build natural gas power plants that would provide the electricity to desalinate water and pump it to the desert, and create artificial oases. I didn't run the numbers, but I'm quite sure that would be carbon negative by a wide margin. This way they continue doing what they know best (extract fossil fuels from the ground) and also beautify their landscape, and help humanity, and maybe even collect some carbon credits from the rest of the world.
> build natural gas power plants that would provide the electricity to desalinate water
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.
That is probably the worst and most carbon intensive way to plant some trees ever
> aren't spending their billions to develop synthetic fuels and direct air capture
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...
I have to assume they're doing both at the same time with how much money they've got to burn.
https://www.cnbc.com/2023/10/09/aramco-siemens-energy-launch...
https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2023-10-25/aramco-pl...
> synthetic fuels
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...
It would be very strange if they didn't try things like these. It's actually a pretty competent government that knows how to look for itself, the very fact that Salafism hasn't yet destroyed them (the Saudi Family) is a massive achievement of its own, not to mention the quite effective OPEC+ cartel.
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 think that the point is that it reveals that Saudi's renewable energy initiatives [1] are just green-washing. The undercover reporting reveals clearly that their singular objective is increasing and prolonging demand for oil and natural gas.
Why can't they earnestly pursue both?
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.
Because "greenwashing" refers to the Saudi's attempts to say that what they're doing is for ecological, climate reasons.
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."
Because their plan to:
"... 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.
They might be earnestly pursuing both, but actively worsening the problem undermines their credibility in conversations about solutions.
> the very fact that Salafism hasn't yet destroyed them
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.
The royal family is actually liberal compared to the people they rule. Read about the Grand Mosque Seizure [1], wherein Salafist extremists seized Saudi's main religious site and demanded the House of Saud to step down because they were influenced by "Westernization".
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.
And to some quite extreme people any kind of government that is not solely based on religious wisdom expressed via the clergy is an affront to God (to Allah) - an extremely serious crime worthy of uprisings and martyrdom. Doesn't matter if it's a monarchy, a democracy, or a Soviet/Chinese style one-party system. Unless that party was exclusively filled with religious scholars.
(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)
> the very fact that Salafism hasn't yet destroyed them
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.
> "There’s a fundamental policy aim, which is to burn and exploit all Saudi’s oil reserves until the last drop"
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.
In theory with enough energy (like from nuclear power) it's possible to synthesize hydrocarbons to use as chemical feedstock. But regardless of policies around extraction and burning, Saudi Arabia will never literally run out of petroleum. It will just get progressively more expensive.
> But regardless of policies around extraction and burning, Saudi Arabia will never literally run out of petroleum. It will just get progressively more expensive.
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.
Not Surprising they would want to increase demand. Something I’ve always told people, is that OPEC countries have done more for the environment than any social movement or technology has. By restricting supply (to get higher prices) they have managed to prevent more co2 emissions than anything else can.
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.
Channel 4 (UK) did a TV report of this a few days ago (based on the same underlying reporting): https://youtu.be/AzSq9jhhrq4?si=JDbIdBkJNEpj0RgF
The comments here are concerning, I don't see any clear condemnation of Saudi Arabia's actions. It is pretty clear by now that keeping pumping CO2 in the atmosphere will have dire effects for all of us, yet according to this article, they are pursuing the opposite goal, in the name of profit. This is a long-term plan to push a whole continent toward more pollution, for god's sake!
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)
If economic support and success would lead to democracy, Saudi-Arabia would be the most democratic country in the world. Unfortunately it is just another dictatorship driven by madman ( no chance for women in Saudi Arabia ).
In some more perfect world, these oil producers would embrace a carbon tax.
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.
Under what circumstance would Russia or Iran ever agree to a carbon tax for fossil fuel extraction? Most of the extraction is done by government owned firms, so who would they even pay the tax to? It would be like taking money out of one pocket and putting it into another.
> A carbon tax also fits well into the capitalist, "don't tell me what to do" self-indulgent society we live in.
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.
The problem here is money doesn't make air cleaner or restore a polluted river, etc.
It can. If you spend it on planting trees that capture CO2 for example.
I must be missing the point, money is very useful for both those things.
The carbon tax doesn't seem to work for Canada. Why would it work elsewhere?
You should not miss Bloomberg's Matt Levine's column on the biggest carbon offset project in Africa. Absolute failure
Source on it not working in Canada?
political: the Libs just pulled it off home heating oil for 3 years in Atlantic Canada, the most polluting fossil fuel we use in an area that happens to be at risk of switching to the opposition
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.
You might want to look into Gnosticism, they had similar ideas about the state of the world.
They probably also undermine any plans by other countries to pump their own oil if its available.
I wish it was different, but we are still a ways off from being independent on oil.
Oil is not enough. We must increase the diversity of things we burn.
No nation is taking this climate stuff seriously.
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.
Whataboutism is not helpful. More than one party can be doing wrong.