It’s no secret that Saudi Arabia’s energy consumption is soaring, and that to meet increasing demand, the Kingdom is siphoning off more and more of its crude to power the booming Saudi economy. Although Saudi Arabia has plenty of oil, what is consumed to meet domestic power demand cannot be sold on the market.
Writing in the Motley Fool, an investment publication, Aimee Duffy notes that Saudi Arabian oil “makes up 90% of the country’s exports and accounts for 80% of its budget revenue,” so finding a solution to rising oil consumption is a must for the Saudi government. It’s also a challenge similar to the one the United States is facing:
Duffy writes that now is the time for Saudi Arabia as demand, technology, and finance are converging to form what she calls a “perfect storm” of opportunity.
Progress toward the Kingdom’s solar goals has been slow going since KACARE announced that it would spend $109 billion. Since then, as Duffy writes, Saudi Aramco has taken the lead in plans to develop solar technology.
The clock is ticking, as highlighted by another item published today in the Saudi daily Arab News by John Kemp. The author notes that “four decades of war, sanctions, nationalization and unrest, oil and gas producers are gradually adjusting to rely less on the Middle East…The region’s importance has been declining in terms of both production and share of proved reserves in recent years.”
As oil production soars in the U.S. from a boom in shale, fortuitously so for the battered-but-recovering American economy,
