How Saudi Arabia plans to keep us addicted to oil

Shimmering in the desert is a futuristic research centre with an urgent mission: make Saudi Arabia’s oil-based economy greener, and quickly. The goal is to rapidly build more solar panels and expand electric car use so the kingdom eventually burns far less oil.

But Saudi Arabia has a far different vision for the rest of the world. A major reason it wants to burn less oil at home is to free up even more to sell abroad. It is 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 biggest supplier as rivals slip away.

In recent days, Saudi representatives pushed at the United Nations global climate summit in Egypt to block a call for the world to burn less oil, according to two people present at the meeting, saying that the summit’s final statement “should not mention fossil fuels”. The effort prevailed: after objections from Saudi Arabia and a few other oil producers, the statement failed to include a call for nations to phase out fossil fuels.

The kingdom’s plan for keeping oil at the centre of the global economy is playing out around the world in Saudi financial and diplomatic activities, as well as in the realms of research, technology and even education. It is a strategy at odds with the scientific consensus that the world must swiftly move away from fossil fuels, including oil and gas, to avoid the worst consequences of global warming.

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The dissonance cuts to the heart of the Saudi kingdom. The government-controlled oil company, Saudi Aramco, already produces one out of every 10 of the world’s barrels of oil and envisions a world where it will be selling even more. Yet climate change and rising temperatures are already threatening life in the desert kingdom like few other places in the world.

Saudi Aramco has become a prolific funder of research into critical energy issues, financing almost 500 studies over the past five years, including research aimed at keeping gasoline cars competitive or casting doubt on electric vehicles, according to the Crossref database, which tracks academic publications. Aramco has collaborated with the United States 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 enhanced oil recovery and other methods to bolster oil production.

Saudi interests have spent close to $140m since 2016 on lobbyists and others to influence US policy and public opinion

Aramco also runs a global network of research centres including a lab near Detroit where it is developing a mobile “carbon capture” device — equipment designed to be attached to a gasoline-burning car, trapping greenhouse gases before they escape the tailpipe. More widely, Saudi Arabia has poured $2.5 billion (€2.4 billion) into American universities over the past decade, making the kingdom one of the nation’s top contributors to higher education.

Saudi interests have spent close to $140 million since 2016 on lobbyists and others to influence US policy and public opinion, making it one of the top countries spending on US lobbying, according to disclosures to the department of justice tallied by the Center for Responsive Politics.

Much of that has focused on bolstering the kingdom’s overall image, particularly after the murder of journalist Jamal Khashoggi in 2018 by Saudi operatives. 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 closed doors at global climate talks, the Saudis have worked to obstruct climate action and research, in particular objecting to calls for a rapid phasing out of fossil fuels. In March, at a UN meeting with climate scientists, Saudi Arabia, together with Russia, pushed to delete a reference to “human-induced climate change” from an official document, in effect disputing the scientifically established fact that the burning of fossil fuels by humans is the main driver of the climate crisis.

“People would like us to give up on investment in hydrocarbons. But no,” said Amin Nasser, Saudi Aramco’s chief executive, because such a move would only wreak havoc with oil markets. The bigger threat was the “lack of investment in oil and gas”, he said.

In a statement, the Saudi ministry of energy said it expected that hydrocarbons such as oil, gas and coal would “continue to be an essential part of the global energy mix for decades” but at the same time the kingdom had “made significant investments in measures to combat climate change”. The statement added: “Far from blocking progress at climate change talks, Saudi Arabia has long played a major role” in negotiations as well as in oil and gas industry groups working to lower emissions.

Saudi Arabia has said it supports the Paris climate agreement, which aims to prevent global temperatures from rising 1.5 degrees above pre-industrial levels, and intends to generate half its electricity from renewables by 2030. The kingdom also plans to plant 10 billion trees in the coming decades and is building Neom, a futuristic carbon-free city that features speedy public transit, vertical farms and a ski resort.

And Saudi Arabia is hedging its bets. The government has invested in Lucid, the American electric vehicle company, and recently said it would form its own electric vehicle company, Ceer. It is investing in hydrogen, a cleaner alternative to oil and gas. Still, the green transition at home has been slow. Saudi Arabia still generates less than 1 per cent of its electricity from renewables, and it isn’t clear how it plans to plant billions of trees in one of the world’s driest regions.

One of the few lobbying firms that stuck with the Saudis as others cut ties after the Khashoggi murder

All the while, the climate threat is getting harder to ignore. At current rates, human survival in the region will be impossible without continuous access to air conditioning, researchers said last year.

Among researchers at the King Abdullah Petroleum Studies and Research Center, a space station-like compound powered by 20,000 solar panels where discussion focuses on solar and wind projects or technologies like carbon capture, the more immediate trade-off is clear. “If we keep consuming our own oil,” said Anvita Arora, who directs the centre’s transport team, “we won’t have any oil left to sell”.

In early 2020, Rob Port, who hosts the podcast Plain Talk on politics and current events in North Dakota, got a call from people representing the Saudi embassy. Would he be interested in interviewing a Saudi spokesperson about oil markets? The call came from Dan Lederman at the LS2 group, a lobbying agency in Iowa that has also worked for agricultural and ethanol groups, and one of the few lobbying firms that stuck with the Saudis as others cut ties after the Khashoggi murder.

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In May of that year, Fahad Nazer, a Saudi embassy spokeman, appeared on Port’s podcast. “They were talking about how they have the same interests we do,” Port said, particularly an interest in “a thriving global oil market”.

That outreach was part of a major effort by LS2group, on behalf of the kingdom, that has reached states including the Dakotas, Texas, Iowa and Ohio. For a retainer of more than $125,000 a month, LS2 group targeted local radio hosts, academics, event planners, sports-industry officials, a former football player and a ski and snowboard club owner, according to filings with the Justice Department.

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Prince Abdulaziz bin Salman, Saudi Arabia’s energy minister, was incredulous. The International Energy Agency, set up a half-century ago to ensure the security of global energy supplies, had just sounded oil’s death knell: It said the world would need to immediately stop approving new oil and gasfields, and to quickly phase out gasoline vehicles, to avert the worst effects of climate change.

Saudi Arabia continues to explore for oil and gas. It pumps oil at an extremely low price of about $7.50 a barrel, beating almost every major rival

Abdulaziz compared that notion to a Hollywood movie. “It’s a sequel to La La Land,” he quipped at a news conference.

Saudi Arabia continues to explore for oil and gas. It pumps oil at an extremely low price of about $7.50 a barrel, beating almost every major rival. Compared with fracking in the United States, for example, and the extensive flaring of methane that entails, Saudi production is also cleaner than competitors.

Last year, Saudi Arabia joined the United States, Canada, Norway and Qatar on a plan to further reduce drilling emissions. Saudi Aramco said last year it would reach “net zero” by 2050, essentially pledging to stop adding greenhouse gases to the atmosphere from oil extraction and production. However, that pledge excludes oil’s main source of planet-warming emissions, those produced by burning it.

Saudi Arabia’s strategy is playing out at global climate talks.

Back in March, when Saudi Arabia and Russia pushed to delete that reference to “human-induced climate change” from the policy document at the UN meeting, Valérie Masson-Delmotte, a French climate scientist leading the session, fought back and won.

“It is unequivocal that human influence has warmed the climate,” she later said. “This is the reason 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 homing in on scientific uncertainties, downplaying the consequences, emphasising the costs of climate action and delaying negotiations on procedural points.

That would be a breakthrough, because carbon capture has yet to be proved at scale

Last year, Saudi Arabia successfully helped strike a sentence from a UN report that called for an active phase-out of fossil fuels. The statement “limits options for decision makers”, a Saudi adviser to the kingdom’s minister of petroleum and mineral resources said, according to documents leaked by the 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, “which is they don’t want anything to happen.”

At the latest round of talks in Egypt, Saudi Arabia highlighted an alternative vision, one that relies on large-scale carbon capture and storage. By 2027, the kingdom will build a facility capable of storing as much carbon dioxide as 2 million gasoline cars would emit in a year.

That would be a breakthrough, because carbon capture has yet to be proved at scale. Yet it was Saudi Arabia’s way of preparing for a warming world, said Adel al-Jubeir, the kingdom’s climate envoy. “In Saudi Arabia, we’re committed to being ahead of it.”

• This article originally appeared in The New York Times