Comment by mycall
1 day ago
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.