How Saudi Aramco Champions Net-Zero Solutions, While Still Pumping 12 Million Barrels Per Day

Forbes

Amin Nasser, the CEO of Saudi Aramco, declared this year that the age of fossil fuels is far from over. “Peak oil and gas is unlikely to come for some time, let alone 2030,” said Nasser. “We should abandon the fantasy of phasing out oil and gas and instead invest in them adequately, reflecting realistic demand assumptions.”  Read the full story on Forbes: https://www.forbes.com/sites/christopherhelman/2024/06/13/the-slow-greening-of-the-worlds-biggest-oil-company/  Subscribe to FORBES: https://www.youtube.com/user/Forbes?sub_confirmation=1  Fuel your success with Forbes. Gain unlimited access to premium journalism, including breaking news, groundbreaking in-depth reported stories, daily digests and more. Plus, members get a front-row seat at members-only events with leading thinkers and doers, access to premium video that can help you get ahead, an ad-light experience, early access to select products including NFT drops and more:  https://account.forbes.com/membership/?utm_source=youtube&utm_medium=display&utm_campaign=growth_non-sub_paid_subscribe_ytdescript  Stay Connected Forbes newsletters: https://newsletters.editorial.forbes.com Forbes on Facebook: http://fb.com/forbes Forbes Video on Twitter: http://www.twitter.com/forbes Forbes Video on Instagram: http://instagram.com/forbes More From Forbes:  http://forbes.com  Forbes covers the intersection of entrepreneurship, wealth, technology, business and lifestyle with a focus on people and success.

Transcript

00:00Today on Forbes, the slow greening of the world's biggest oil company.

00:06Amin Nasser, the CEO of Saudi Aramco,

00:09declared this year that the age of fossil fuels is far from over.

00:14He said, quote,

00:15''Peak oil and gas is unlikely to come for some time, let alone 2030.

00:20We should abandon the fantasy of phasing out oil and gas

00:23and instead invest in them adequately, reflecting realistic demand assumptions.''

00:29Of course, he would say that.

00:31He's the head of the world's biggest oil company,

00:34which is ranked number three on this year's Forbes Global 2000 list,

00:37down one spot from last year on lower oil prices.

00:42The Global 2000 list is our annual ranking of the world's largest public companies,

00:47which was released last week.

00:49As CEO of Aramco,

00:51Nasser oversees the production of more than 12 million barrels per day of oil and gas.

00:57Aramco is such a behemoth that both its output and $117 billion in net income

01:03is more than three times higher even than ExxonMobil,

01:06which is down six spots to number 14 on this year's list.

01:10Chevron, number 22 and down four spots,

01:13looks like a comparative pipsqueak with merely $20 billion in profits last year.

01:19And Aramco isn't going anywhere.

01:21With proven reserves of well over 200 billion barrels,

01:25it can keep that pace for decades to come.

01:28So yes, Nasser is biased.

01:30But the thing is, he's not wrong.

01:33Renewable, zero-carbon energy is so far an addition, not a transition.

01:38For all the endless hype about the transition away from oil, gas and coal,

01:42the reality is that the world has never relied more on carbon-spewing energy sources

01:46than it does now.

01:48Nasser said, quote,

01:50In the real world, the current transition strategy is visibly failing on most fronts.

01:56So far, renewables can't scale fast enough.

01:59Their upfront costs are too high, and they are not as convenient.

02:03For all of China's advances in erecting solar panels, for example,

02:07it still burned a record 5 billion tons of coal last year,

02:1010 times U.S. coal consumption.

02:13Electric vehicles now make up 19% of global car sales,

02:17yet global petroleum consumption continues to inch past 100 million barrels per day.

02:23According to Claudio Gallimberti, an analyst at consultancy Rystad Energy,

02:28quote,

02:28Oil demand remains sticky and will continue to rise, quote,

02:33as low-carbon alternatives are not yet sufficiently developed

02:36or economically competitive to offset the growing demand for transportation and industrial services.

02:43So it might surprise you to learn that Aramco, ironically,

02:46is already one of the world's biggest investors in the low-carbon transition.

02:51Nasser has dedicated 10% of its $50 billion a year in capital spending to renewables

02:56and launched the Aramco New Energies division.

03:00This year, they completed the Sudair solar project with 1.5 gigawatts of capacity,

03:05while the 2.7 gigawatt Shuaiba solar field will be completed next year.

03:10By 2030, Aramco promises 12 gigawatts of solar and wind.

03:14The company is in talks with Spanish oil giant Repsol for a stake in its renewables business,

03:20building on an existing Repsol JV to make zero-carbon jet fuel

03:24using so-called green hydrogen and captured carbon dioxide.

03:29At Aramco's Jubail refining complex,

03:31they are building a system to grab 9 million tons a year of CO2.

03:35That will complement an existing process that captures carbon emissions

03:39from an ethylene glycol plant and turns it into low-carbon methanol.

03:44Yet if Aramco is going to deliver on Nasser's promise to capture and sequester

03:4844 million tons per year of CO2 by 2035, it will need some new tricks.

03:55To hunt them down, Aramco has more than doubled funding to venture capital arm Aramco Ventures,

04:00with $4 billion available for investments.

04:03Among the most promising is a new investment of tens of millions of dollars

04:07that Aramco Ventures has made into a New Mexico-based startup called Spiritus.

04:12Born out of Los Alamos National Lab, Spiritus co-founders Charles Kadu and Matt Lee

04:18have developed a novel technology that they claim absorbs CO2 from the air.

04:23And unlike competing CO2 capture technologies,

04:25which rely on giant fans and compressors to suck in air,

04:29Spiritus' devices work passively, as quiet as a tree.

04:35For full coverage, check out Christopher Hellman's piece on forbes.com.

04:40This is Kieran Meadows from Forbes. Thanks for tuning in.

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