One estimate focused specifically on oil burned for desalination puts Saudi Arabia at about 300,000 barrels per day used for desalination.
Separately, a reputable energy sector overview notes desalination is about 6% of Saudi Arabia’s electricity consumption (in 2020) [0] [1], which is nowhere near implying over half of extracted petroleum.
Some older and less efficient desalination plants directly burn oil/coal/gas to desalinate water, so no electricity is involved.
That is perhaps the source of the discrepancy.
With cheap oil, there is little financial incentive to upgrade these plants.
Remember the government need not 'pay' market price for this oil - they can prop the market up by restricting oil exports whilst simultaneously using oil internally at production cost.
Considering the target use case and location, they can very much replace the oil use with solar panels.
It's actually perfect, because water usage is probably much lower at night, exactly when solar is weak.
I doubt they are going to go back to being poor that hard. They might not get as much easy money, but once the core infrastructure is built, it doesn't cost as much to maintain it.
It genuinely puzzles me why they wouldn’t buy some solar panels to run desalination. The oil they’d then be able to sell instead of burning would pay for it easily.
Of course there is not always a good reason. The reason may be that the country is run by aristocrats who are rich and comfortable and don’t care and the present thing works so why fix it. If the system does stop working it’ll only really impact the poor.
Saudi Arabia uses more than half of the petrol they extract on desalination.
It's not sustainable and once it runs out, the country will go back to being a poor desert.
One estimate focused specifically on oil burned for desalination puts Saudi Arabia at about 300,000 barrels per day used for desalination.
Separately, a reputable energy sector overview notes desalination is about 6% of Saudi Arabia’s electricity consumption (in 2020) [0] [1], which is nowhere near implying over half of extracted petroleum.
300,000 ÷ 9,500,000 ≈ 3.2% of crude production.
[0] https://www.ifri.org/en/studies/geopolitics-seawater-desalin...
[1] https://www.eia.gov/international/content/analysis/countries...
Some older and less efficient desalination plants directly burn oil/coal/gas to desalinate water, so no electricity is involved.
That is perhaps the source of the discrepancy.
With cheap oil, there is little financial incentive to upgrade these plants.
Remember the government need not 'pay' market price for this oil - they can prop the market up by restricting oil exports whilst simultaneously using oil internally at production cost.
Looking into it a bit more, it seems my information was a bit dated, and they did get strides in the last 15 years.
There’s a big glowy thing in the sky that they can use to extract energy also. They have a lot of that energy too
Considering the target use case and location, they can very much replace the oil use with solar panels. It's actually perfect, because water usage is probably much lower at night, exactly when solar is weak.
I doubt they are going to go back to being poor that hard. They might not get as much easy money, but once the core infrastructure is built, it doesn't cost as much to maintain it.
Are you sure? That’s insane if true.
It genuinely puzzles me why they wouldn’t buy some solar panels to run desalination. The oil they’d then be able to sell instead of burning would pay for it easily.
Of course there is not always a good reason. The reason may be that the country is run by aristocrats who are rich and comfortable and don’t care and the present thing works so why fix it. If the system does stop working it’ll only really impact the poor.
Investing in solar panels was one of the NEOM project goals.