[HN Gopher] Undercover in Saudi Arabia's secretive program to ke...
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Undercover in Saudi Arabia's secretive program to keep the world
burning oil
Author : mediumdeviation
Score : 117 points
Date : 2023-11-28 19:14 UTC (3 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (climate-reporting.org)
(TXT) w3m dump (climate-reporting.org)
| TheBigRoomXXL wrote:
| https://web.archive.org/web/20231128161007/https://www.nytim...
| complex_exp wrote:
| 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.
| saiya-jin wrote:
| Indeed, people get often surprised that other people,
| corporations or nation states act in their own self-interests
| and don't exist in some hippie paradise... like when it suits
| them they would like to live in such star trek communism, apart
| from those pesky purges and enslaving everyone to ensure
| 'homogeneity' and at least an illusion or working society.
|
| I went through failure of one such system in Eastern Europe and
| saw first hand how it destroys so much we consider granted in
| one's life and in lives of your closest ones. Those western
| kids supporting communism and its variants - shame on you, you
| have no clue about real world and life and you literally do an
| insult to (tens of if not hundreds of) millions of dead
| communism victims and its twisted ideologies.
|
| Sorry to get carried away a bit since this is something
| personal for all those affected.
| yetanotherloser wrote:
| I regret that I have but one upvote to give your post.
| FirmwareBurner wrote:
| You had me in the first half, but what does the topic have to
| do with communism and western kids supporting it?
| cjblomqvist wrote:
| There is a grey scale. It doesn't need to be either or.
| danans wrote:
| 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.
|
| 1. https://powersaudiarabia.com.sa/web/index.html
| The_Colonel wrote:
| 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.
| SamBam wrote:
| 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."
| barryrandall wrote:
| They might be earnestly pursuing both, but actively
| worsening the problem undermines their credibility in
| conversations about solutions.
| akira2501 wrote:
| > 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.
| goodSteveramos wrote:
| I 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.
| SeanAnderson wrote:
| 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...
| culi wrote:
| 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
| tikkun wrote:
| > It's also spending $270 trillion by 2030 on low-carbon
| energy initiatives
|
| Article says $270 billion, not trillion
| culi wrote:
| Woops, typo. Thanks. Edited
| thrawa8387336 wrote:
| Some people do understand, there are no surprises. I assume you
| are American educated
| pengaru wrote:
| 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.
| sidewndr46 wrote:
| 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.
| akira2501 wrote:
| > 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.
| tensor wrote:
| 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.
| fredgrott wrote:
| 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..
| monkeydreams wrote:
| 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?
| credit_guy wrote:
| 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.
| alephnerd wrote:
| > 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.
|
| [0] - https://www.vision2030.gov.sa/en/projects/alkhafji/
| alephnerd wrote:
| > 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...
| danans wrote:
| 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
| gyrate wrote:
| Oil is not enough. We must increase the diversity of things we
| burn.
| 410ForLunch wrote:
| 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.
| abraae wrote:
| 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.
| glitchc wrote:
| The carbon tax doesn't seem to work for Canada. Why would it
| work elsewhere?
| thrawa8387336 wrote:
| You should not miss Bloomberg's Matt Levine's column on the
| biggest carbon offset project in Africa. Absolute failure
| makeworld wrote:
| Source on it not working in Canada?
| wintogreen74 wrote:
| 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.
| thrawa8387336 wrote:
| You might want to look into Gnosticism, they had similar ideas
| about the state of the world.
| zlg_codes wrote:
| The problem here is money doesn't make air cleaner or restore a
| polluted river, etc.
| cjblomqvist wrote:
| It can. If you spend it on planting trees that capture CO2
| for example.
| abraae wrote:
| I must be missing the point, money is very useful for both
| those things.
| nradov wrote:
| 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.
| estebank wrote:
| > 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.
| ptdorf wrote:
| > "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.
| nradov wrote:
| 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.
| RetroTechie wrote:
| > 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.
| robotnikman wrote:
| 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.
| CrzyLngPwd wrote:
| 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.
| yencabulator wrote:
| Whataboutism is not helpful. More than one party can be doing
| wrong.
| TanguyN wrote:
| 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)
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