An urgent mission is to make Saudi Arabia's oil-based economy greener and quicker. The goal is to make the kingdom burn less oil by building more solar panels and using electric cars.
Saudi Arabia does not see the world in the same way. To free up more to sell abroad is one of the reasons it wants to burn less oil. The kingdom has a long-term strategy to keep the world hooked on oil for decades to come and remain the biggest supplier.
According to two people present at the meeting, Saudi representatives pushed at the UN climate summit in Egypt to block a call for the world to burn less oil. Saudi Arabia objected to a call for nations to phase out fossil fuels in the statement.
The kingdom of Saudi Arabia has a plan to keep oil at the center of the global economy, and it is playing out around the world. The scientific consensus is that the world must quickly move away from fossil fuels to avoid the worst effects of global warming.
The Saudi kingdom is cut off from the rest of the world. Saudi Aramco, the government-controlled oil company, already produces one out of every 10 of the world's barrels of oil. Climate change and rising temperatures are already threatening the lives of people in the desert kingdom.
Over the past five years, Saudi Aramco has financed almost 500 studies into critical energy issues, including research aimed at keeping gasoline cars competitive or casting doubt on electric vehicles. A six-year effort to develop more efficient gasoline and engines is one of the high-profile research projects that Aramco has collaborated with the United States Department of Energy on.
A lab near Detroit is part of a global network of research centers run by Aramco. Saudi Arabia has poured over $2 billion into American universities over the past decade, making it one of the top contributors to higher education.
Saudi interests have spent close to $140 million on lobbyists and others to influence American policy and public opinion in the last two years, making it one of the top countries spending on U.S. lobbying.
Much of that was focused on bolstering the kingdom's overall image after the murder of the journalist. The Saudi effort has extended to building alliances in American Corn Belt states that produce corn-based products that are threatened by electric cars.
The Saudis objected to calls for a rapid phase out of fossil fuels at the global climate talks. In March, at a United Nations meeting with climate scientists, Saudi Arabia, together with Russia, pushed to remove a reference to "human-caused climate change" from an official document.
People want us to stop investing in oil. A move like that would wreak havoc on oil markets. Lack of investment in oil and gas was the biggest threat.
The Saudi Ministry of Energy said it expected that oil, gas and coal would 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 said that Saudi Arabia has played a major role in negotiations as well as in oil and gas industry groups working to reduce emissions.
Saudi Arabia wants to generate half of its electricity from renewable sources by the year 2030. 10 billion trees will be planted by the kingdom in the coming decades, as well as a futuristic carbon-free city called Neom.
Saudi Arabia is trying to figure out what will happen. The government invested in the American electric vehicle company, and recently formed a company called Ceer. Hydrogen is an alternative to oil and gas.
The green transition at home has taken a long time. Saudi Arabia produces less than 1 percent of its electricity from renewable sources, and it isn't clear how it plans to plant billions of trees in one of the driest regions.
Climate threats are getting harder to ignore. Human survival in the region will be impossible without air-conditioning, according to researchers.
A space station-like compound powered by 20,000 solar panels where discussion focuses on solar and wind projects or technologies like carbon capture is the more immediate trade-off among researchers.
"If we keep consuming our own oil, we won't have any oil left to sell."
Rob Port got a call from people from the Saudi Embassy in early 2020. He would like to interview a Saudi spokesman about oil markets.
The call came from Dan Lederman at the LS2 group, a lobbying agency in Iowa that has worked for agricultural and ethanol groups, as well as one of the few lobbying firms that stuck with the Saudis.
Mr. Port had a Saudi Embassy spokesman appear on his show. They were talking about how they have the same interests as we do.
LS2group, on behalf of the kingdom, has been reaching out to states like the Dakotas, Texas, Iowa and Ohio. LS2group targeted local radio hosts, academics, event planners, sports-industry officials, a former football player and a ski and snowboard club owner for large retainers.
History of close relations with the United States is one of the topics that has been covered in that campaign. Jeff M.Angelo, a former Iowa state senator who now hosts a talk show, said that Saudi representatives approached him about their views on electric vehicles.
He said it was terrible that the Biden administration was forcing you to buy an electric car when you could be making money and supporting your farmers.
The research center near Detroit is one of the things Saudi Aramco is trying to do. Researchers are working on a new invention. It would suck some of the planet-warming carbon dioxide from the exhaust before it could rise into the atmosphere.
Only a small amount of emissions are trapped by the prototype. It's part of a plan to keep gasoline cars competitive. Two-thirds of the world's petroleum is used for transportation and any shift away from gasoline vehicles would eat into oil demand.
It's a shift that Aramco doesn't like.
Is electric vehicles going to cause a decrease in oil production? Khalid A. Al-Falih was the former chairman of Saudi Aramco. No, the answer is no.
Saudi Arabia's state-owned oil company, Saudi Aramco, is working with some of the world's largest auto companies to develop a fuel for hybrid gas-electric vehicles. Some Saudi funded research doubts the usefulness of electric cars.
The Department of Energy said in June that gasoline cars will dominate new vehicle sales for decades. Technical papers on ways to increase the flow of oil from wells have been written by the department and Aramco.
The Saudi Arabia's energy minister was surprised. 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.
The prince compared that idea to a movie. He made a joke at a news conference.
Saudi Arabia is exploring for oil. It sells oil at a very low price of about $7.50 a barrel. Saudi production is cleaner than competitors in the United States and other countries.
Saudi Arabia joined the US, Canada, Norway, and Qatar in a plan to reduce drilling emissions. Saudi Aramco pledged last year to stop adding greenhouse gases to the atmosphere by midcentury. Burning oil is the main source of planet warming emissions.
That's an advantage for them. A senior fellow at the Center for Strategic and International Studies said that if buyers start discriminating between dirtier barrels and cleaner barrels, Saudi Arabia looks better than oil produced in the United States.
The recent turmoil in the global energy market has been vindicated by the view that a rapid transition to cleaner electric vehicles would bring economic chaos.
The crown prince of Saudi Arabia said in July that policies that exclude main sources of energy will lead to inflation and an increase in energy prices.
At the global climate talks, Saudi Arabia's strategy is being played out.
Valérie Masson-Delmotte, a French climate scientist, fought back when Saudi Arabia and Russia tried to remove a reference to human-caused climate change from a policy document.
She said that it was clear that human influence had warmed the climate. The reason I took the floor was because of this.
The Saudi intervention was the latest example of a yearslong effort to slow progress by homing in on scientific uncertainties, downplaying the consequences and delaying negotiations on procedural points.
Saudi Arabia helped strike a sentence from a UN report that called for a phaseout of fossil fuels. According to documents leaked by the environmental group, a Saudi adviser to the kingdom's minister of petroleum and mineral resources said that the statement limits options for decision makers. Don't give the sentence.
Saleemul Huq is the director of the International Center for Climate Change and Development in Bangladesh.
Saudi Arabia presented an alternative vision that relied on large-scale carbon capture and storage. The kingdom will build a facility that can hold as much carbon dioxide as 2 million gasoline cars emit in a year.
Carbon capture hasn't been proven at scale. It was Saudi Arabia's way of preparing for a warming world. We are committed to being ahead of it.
Lisa Friedman reported from Sharm El Sheikh.
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