The world hoped to crucify Saudi Arabia as the top oil exporter, its energy minister said on the sidelines of Egypt’s COP27 summit, adding that the kingdom was closely watching renewable energy efforts by other countries.
Prince Abdulaziz bin Salman on Saudi Arabia’s efforts to produce cleaner energy and reduce its carbon footprint: “The world hopes to crucify us.”
“We want people to match us, and we want to make sure people put their money where their mouth is,” he said. Of the Saudi contributions, he said, show that Saudi state oil producer Aramco ( 2222.SE ) has the lowest methane emissions oall thosell measure.
Methane emissions, although less persistent than carbon dioxide, are extremely strong, and the amount produced by the oil and gas industry was a topic of discussion at COP27 on Friday.
The minister also said that the kingdom is on track to achieve net emissions by 2060 and that, depending on technology, that could contribute to the goal.
“We think the date can hopefully be brought forward, but I just want to make sure that if we commit, we will deliver, but hopefully we will be on time,” he said. Prince Abdulaziz said
Saudi Arabia aims to be the cheapest producer of hydrogen using renewable energy.
“We want to present ourselves as an energy exporting country because we are working hard to export hydrogen along with oil and liquid gases,” he told Reuters. “Hopefully we’ll do the electricity as well.”
The Kingdom says it should also meet the goal of capturing million tonnes of carbon dioxide by 2035, he said.
Saudi Aramco signed a joint development agreement with the Ministry of Energy on Thursday to build a carbon capture and storage centre capable of storing up to 9 million tonnes of carbon dioxide per year until 2027.
Environmental activists are generally wary of the carbon footprint because industry can use it to justify continuing to use fossil fuels.
Oil and gas officials and industry leaders say fossil fuels are still necessary, especially as the world faces an economic crisis and supply disruptions from Russia due to the war in Ukraine.
They say underinvestment in fossil fuels helped fuel this year’s price hikes, which have pushed inflation to multi-decade highs, and that oil and gas must be developed alongside renewable energy.
“You have to invest to decarbonize existing resources like oil and gas while building renewable energy sectors.” “It has to happen at the same time,” Aramco chief Amin Nasser said on Friday.
