Aramco CEO has "Inconvenient Truths" for Socialist Environmentalists

[Tom Kirkman + 8,860]

International Petroleum Week remarks by Saudi Aramco President and CEO

"... A recent survey revealed that the energy sector faces greater reputational challenges than any other.

The full extent was brought home to me when I was in Davos last month.

One senior financial figure I spoke to confidently predicted the end of our industry in about five years!

Another was slightly less pessimistic – but he speculated that most vehicles on the road would be electric in five to 10 years, when today they account for less than half a percent!

In other words, important stakeholders believe that the entire world will soon run on anything… but oil!

These views are not based on logic and facts, and are formed mostly in response to pressure and hype.

But they are sincerely held.

And our stakeholders are clearly tuning out. 

They are not hearing us when we say that passenger vehicles are only 20% of the world’s oil demand.

Or that the remaining 80% is used by sectors like planes, ships, trucks, petrochemicals, and lubes for which there is no alternative yet and where demand for oil is expected to increase substantially.

They do not recognize a world where alternatives such as solar and wind, although growing rapidly (including in Saudi Arabia), still account for just 2% of primary energy demand today.

The intermittent nature of renewables does not seem to be a concern either, or the ongoing need for proven and reliable electricity generation capacity as back-up, much of it fueled by gas.

There is very little thought given to the massive global energy infrastructure that would need to be transformed in every corner of the world, costing trillions of dollars, bearing in mind under-developed countries that cannot afford expensive technologies.

And people gloss over the reality that today, in many countries, more electric vehicles means more coal-powered vehicles. ..."

[John Foote + 1,135]

Amin Nassar is actually, IMHO, one of the good ones.

California fossil fuel consumption is actually up. With emission regulations the air in LA is actually usually pretty good now. Can't say that about the KSA's air though.

Ah, that addiction to suburbia and car.

You know I am a fan of not all the eggs in one basket, renewables absolutely are a part of the equation, but oil, like coal, is going to be in use for a very, very, very, long time. Not in geological time terms, but in human lifetimes. Oil stores BTUs wonderfully. The KSA needs to get on serious solar bandwagon. Not so much for the carbon issue, but to offset the oil they burn for electricity that they could sell instead. 

[Oil_Engineer + 86]

On 2/27/2019 at 7:54 PM, John Foote said:

Amin Nassar is actually, IMHO, one of the good ones.

California fossil fuel consumption is actually up. With emission regulations the air in LA is actually usually pretty good now. Can't say that about the KSA's air though.

Ah, that addiction to suburbia and car.

You know I am a fan of not all the eggs in one basket, renewables absolutely are a part of the equation, but oil, like coal, is going to be in use for a very, very, very, long time. Not in geological time terms, but in human lifetimes. Oil stores BTUs wonderfully. The KSA needs to get on serious solar bandwagon. Not so much for the carbon issue, but to offset the oil they burn for electricity that they could sell instead. 

The Saudis do have a great location for utility scale solar. The land is almost worthless. They should cover it with fields of solar. The Omanis are using solar in their operations already. 

[Meredith Poor + 894]

There is 'fossil fuels', and there are 'hydrocarbons'. This blog post is another example of confusion between the two.

'Fossil fuels' are extracted from the ground. They are the leftovers from geological processes.

'Hydrocarbons' may also be 'fossil fuels', but not necessarily. They may be made using industrial processes, or they may be the natural product of plants. For examples of the latter, keyword search 'isoprene', 'jeffries pine', 'diesel tree', 'ethylene + tomato ripening', and 'anaerobic digestion'. The list of hydrocarbon synthesis technologies in the laboratory is too long to list here.

Jets flying 20 hours over open ocean aren't likely to ever be electric. However, it has already been proven that they can fly on renewably generated hydrocarbons. Those hydrocarbons may be generated at the point where they are pumped into their respective vehicle. Said point may or may not be within a member of OPEC or some other country that produces 'fossil' oil independently.

Both parties can be right, just not in the way either of them envision.