Saudi Green

A couple things tend to pop into your mind when the words “Saudi Arabia” are mentioned: sand, oil… and maybe that it’s not too good to be a woman living in them thar parts. When the word “green” is added to the mix, it’s more the color of money that oil revenues generate or perhaps the color of that kingdom’s flag. It’s an oil rich nation that’s even branched into refining their petroleum into usable fuel. But with all that desert sand, warm seas and enough powerful sunshine to bring a wave of melanomas to the whole world if exposed to those pentrating rays, with not a whole lot of people living in such harsh climes, if there weren’t so much oil underground, Saudi Arabia could equally be awash in sources of alternative energy.

There’s no oil shortage these days. Every time you turn around, another nation discovers oil reserves. Brazil and Israel being the latest members to the bubbling-crude set. Even the United States is pumping petroleum at a record pace, but unlike the Saudis, our population is so vast, we cannot produce enough domestically to keep up with demand. China produces oil too, but its population issues are so much bigger that it could never dream of catching internal production up to internal demand. In case you wondered, here are the current top mega-oil producing nations in order (from CIA statistics): Saudi Arabia 11.6 million barrels per day, United States 10.9 million barrels per day, Russia 10.3 million, Iran 4.2 million (estimated) and China 4 million.

There are whole lot of folks in the U.S. who laugh at government research into “green power,” who really prefer to build an economy on a fuel source over which they have exceptionally limited price control. No matter what politicians say, the only things they can do to control the price of oil is discourage consumption, subsidize consumers or waste their reserves by flooding the market with cheap oil (know any rich Texan oil barons who would cut their profits just to be nice?) until those reserves are exhausted. Otherwise, it’s a global market – separated into grades depending on the purity of the product – a giant bathtub that has one price per grade in every nation on earth (plus all the lovely taxes layered in by loving governments everywhere). When oil prices soar in Europe, we get the same market price here, even for oil that is generated locally.

So the Saudi royals have no problem making sure their population has a subsidized price at the pump, and you’d think with their vast oil reserves and massive (and growing) petroleum extraction and refining infrastructure, they’d be sitting pretty for the foreseeable future without lifting too many sundrenched fingers. But no, my friend, you’d be wrong. While too many American politicians scoff at alternative energy, oil-laden Saudi Arabia is shifting its internal energy consumption paradigms from oil to alternative.

In late October, “Prince Turki Al Faisal Al Saud, a top spokesperson for Saudi Arabia, said that Saudi Arabia intends to generate 100 percent of its power from renewable sources, such as nuclear, solar, and low-carbon energies… ‘Oil is more precious for us underground than as a fuel source,’ said the prince, whose country holds approximately 20 percent of the world's oil reserves, according to the International Energy Agency. ‘If we can get to the point where we can replace fossil fuels and use oil to produce other products that are useful, that would be very good for the world.’” Auto.Aol.com, October 24^th.

Apparently, someone told them that regardless of current abundance, fossil fuel resources are indeed limited, and as long as there are lots of stupid countries out there not taking steps to wean themselves from demon carbon-based fuels – which seems to include a sizeable proportion of the American public – the Saudis want to make sure they have plenty of inventory to sell to nations unwilling to prepare for the inevitable shortages, fluctuations based on political instability and increasing global demand. When Middle Eastern stability plunges, Texas crude soars in price. And so does Saudi wealth. Are we going to be that profligate and improvident grasshopper, fiddling away as the ant prepares for winter… or are we going to wake up from our completely unrealistic dream that we can get oil prices completely under control?

I’m Peter Dekom, and that such a wide percentage of the American body politic is so fuelish that it thinks if we generate “North American oil independence,” oil prices will plunge, at least at home, never ceases to amaze me… and it tells me just how far down American education has fallen.