Comment by huffmsa
6 years ago
They've only really known oil for 3 generations, so yes.
And they're also desperate. The future where the world doesn't need their oil (or they've run out) isn't a distant future anymore. It's coming, and coming faster and faster. They need to diversify anyway they can if they want to avoid going back to just being a desert. And so they're jumping at pretty much any deal they see
It's not coming and coming -- it's here. Prices are negative, and they need at least something like ~$60/barrel to keep their government running and closer to $80/barrel to keep their whole country running.
But yeah, I agree with your main point: they're jumping at deals and chasing big wins, a la Dubai. Cuz they don't really have any other choice.
Sheikh Rashid's quote [1] kind of sums up the desperation of several countries in the Middle East to somehow diversify out of oil: "My grandfather rode a camel, my father rode a camel, I drive a Mercedes, my son drives a Land Rover, his son will drive a Land Rover, but his son will ride a camel"
1: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rashid_bin_Saeed_Al_Maktoum
Sheikh Rashid was born in 1912. The quote talks about his great-grandson. That generation has been alive for a while and comfortably drives Land Rovers.
>The future where the world doesn't need their oil
We'll need oil for plastics even if we stop using it for transportation, and Saudi oil is just about the easiest/cheapest to extract, so we'll be using their oil for a long time, but it won't be as grotesquely profitable for them as in the past.
Yes. Though we don't really "need" oil for that. You can make plastics out of any source of carbon and hydrogen.
Oil is just convenient, because you need less energy to make the plastic than if you start with eg water and CO2.
That the whole shooting match right there. "just convenient" is meaningless - we don't make anything unless the cost/benefit works out. If we didn't have oil, it'd be safe to say we'd never have adopted ubiquitous plastic at all.