Saudi Arabia is now focusing on a variety of energy sources and is taking climate change and efforts to combat global warming seriously, said the energy minister of the world's largest** exporter.
"As a country, we are no longer known as a major oil producer, we want to be called an energy producer of all kinds of energy," Saudi Energy Minister Prince Abdulaziz bin Salman said at a mining conference in Riyadh on Wednesday, quoted by Reuters. He said Saudi Arabia's fossil fuel production will continue, but the kingdom will work to reduce fossil fuel emissions. Prince Abdulaziz bin Salman added: "There is still interest in continuing to produce fossil fuels. However, like us, we should call on everyone to do the same, and we must work to reduce these fossil fuels. ”
Last month, at the COP28 climate summit in Dubai, Prince Abdulaziz bin Salman told Bloomberg that Saudi Arabia would not support any text calling for phasing down fossil fuels at COP28. The Saudi minister said Saudi Arabia would "absolutely not" accept the argument that "fossil fuels should be phased down".
Amid a heated debate over the future of fossil fuel use and production, COP28 entered a one-day long stretch that ended with a compromise text that for the first time referred to calls for the abandonment of fossil fuels. But the final deal was watered down compared to any reference to phasing out or phasing down fossil fuels, as opposition from many oil exporters, led by Saudi Arabia, hampered negotiations in the final days and delayed the meeting.
Saudi Arabia and its state-owned oil giant Aramco have repeatedly said that the energy sector and the debate should focus on how to reduce emissions, not reduce oil and gas production.
Aramco CEO Amin Nasser told the Energy Intelligence Forum in October that the Saudi oil giant is working on renewables, e-fuels, hydrogen, and carbon capture and storage (CCS). But he added that the world will need oil and gas for decades, and renewables won't be able to meet that demand in a few decades.
Nasser noted that additional oil and gas demand over the next decade will require new upstream investment to offset the 5-7% annual decline. (Compiled by Xiao Chen).
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