Sarah Glubb and Shatha Almasoudi

LONDON/RIYADH: Saudi Arabia for sure will not stop producing oil and natural gas, as a matter of fact its national oil company, Saudi Aramco, is pressing ahead with its plans to increase its maximum production capacity by another million barrels to hit 13 million barrels a day.

“We know that there will be demand for Saudi oil,” Saudi Energy Minister Prince Abdulaziz bin Salman said in a virtual webinar with the Economist magazine last week.

The energy minister, however, sounded like the world’s largest oil exporter was shifting away from oil and transitioning into future technologies faster than anticipated.

Prince Abdulaziz said the Kingdom wants to become a role model for other countries on how to reduce methane gas. The Kingdom will be competing with Norway on being the lowest emitter of methane in its oil and gas facilities.

“What we are seeking is a collaboration in bringing technologies to mitigate emissions. The whole world needs to focus on emission reduction of all greenhouse gases in all sectors. And we should all involve ourselves in that mitigation effort,” the energy minister stressed.

He called for reaching a consensus on this issue so as to avoid disturbing the economic balance of any stakeholder. 

The energy minister said the focus should be on the reduction of emissions by allowing people “use what energy they have and can produce indigenously.”

Last month, the Kingdom launched the Saudi Green Initiative, which aims to eliminate 278 million tons of carbon dioxide emissions per year by 2030, up from a previous target of 130 million tons.

At the Saudi Green Initiative Forum, the Kingdom also announced to achieve net carbon neutrality by 2060.

Talking about Saudi Arabia’s target year, Prince Abdulaziz said the Kingdom is mindful of the how the technologies will develop over the course of time to achieve net carbon neutrality.

In other words, the energy minister did not favor the approach to jump-start the future. “You’d have to work on today and tomorrow,” he said. 

Referring to a report by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, which said the widespread application of carbon capture and storage process would depend on technical maturity, Prince Abdulaziz said: “That’s why we are aiming for 2060.”

He, however, did not rule out pulling the target year based on the technological advancement. “If the technologies do mature before 2040,” he said the Kingdom would change the target year and “bring that date earlier and I hope much earlier.”

Stressing on the technological aspect, Prince Abdulaziz said most of countries have set their net zero-carbon emissions target one, two or more decades from today and tied those targets with different conditions such as “funding, financing or lending.”