$170,000 a minute: why Saudi Arabia is the biggest blocker of climate action
Saudi Arabia vital statistics
GDP per capita per annum: $35,230 (global average $14,210) Total annual tonnes CO2: 736m (seventh highest country) CO2 per capita: 22.13 metric tonnes (global average 4.7) Most recent NDC (carbon plan): 2021 Climate plans: critically insufficient Population: 36 million
Can you imagine someone giving you $170,000 (£129,000)? What would you buy? Can you imagine getting another $170,000 one minute later? And the handouts then continuing every minute for years? If so, you have a feel for the colossal cash machine that is Saudi Arabia’s state oil company Aramco, the world’s biggest producer of oil and gas last year. That tidal wave of cash keeps the authoritarian kingdom afloat, as it lavishes money on fossil fuel subsidies for its citizens, soft power projects like the football World Cup and mind-boggling construction projects. But it is also why the drive for accelerating climate action, principally getting the world off fossil fuels, is seen as an existential threat to Saudi Arabia: its economy and even its ruling royal family. For decades, Saudi Arabia has fought harder than any other country to block and delay international climate action – a diplomatic “wrecking ball” saying that abandoning fossil fuels is a fantasy. Its opposition has continued in the run-up to the UN Cop30 climate summit in Brazil, yet the country is now also making a whirlwind switch to renewable power at home. In another contradiction, slowing climate action worsens the impacts on a desert kingdom that is extremely vulnerable to global heating and where its 36 million people already contend with conditions “at the verge of livability”.
How can these contradictions be understood, and can countries desperate to fight a climate crisis that is already killing a person a minute outflank Saudi obstruction? “The Saudis are not crazy.” says Karim Elgendy, an expert on climate and energy in the Middle East. “But they don’t want to be a failed state.” The point of the spear Saudi Arabia almost killed the global UN climate treaty at birth three decades ago. Negotiations veteran Alden Meyer was in the room at the UN headquarters in New York as the gavel was about to come down on a treaty. “French diplomat Jean Ripert had to ignore the Saudis, and the Kuwaitis, vigorously waving their nameplates in the back of the room, trying to object to adoption of the treaty. He just ignored them and brought down the gavel.” “But that’s something you can only do if it’s a handful of countries,” he says. Since then, Saudi Arabia has taken care to mobilise the Arab group or other major players, and to great effect. “They’ve been the point of the spear in terms of organising the resistance,” says Meyer, at the climate thinktank E3G. An early and pivotal victory for Saudi Arabia and its oil-rich Opec allies was blocking the use of voting to take decisions in UN climate negotiations – voting is common in other UN bodies. Instead, consensus is needed for approval. “This impasse has never been overcome. It gives outsized influence to laggards, which suits Saudi Arabia very well,” a report by the Climate Social Science Network found, with the impasse since “crippling” the talks. Armed with an effective veto, Saudi Arabia has held back climate negotiations ever since by becoming master of the arcane and complicated procedural rules that govern the process, “seeking to ensure it achieves as little as possible, as slowly as possible”, the report said.
More than a dozen obstruction tactics have been deployed, from disputing the agendas to claiming that strands of the talks have no mandate to discuss issues it dislikes – such as phasing out fossil fuels – to insisting action to help vulnerable countries adapt to global heating is linked to compensating oil-rich nations for lost sales. Delay is a key aim and, for example, Saudi Arabia strongly opposed any virtual negotiations when Covid shut down the world in 2020. “They are really good at it, absolutely masterful,” says Dr Joanna Depledge at the University of Cambridge. Saudi Arabia also deploys broader arguments: that the big historical emitters, such as the US, Russia and UK, bear the main responsibility for tackling climate change under the terms of the treaty, and that while it sells the oil, helping to fund its development, other nations actually burn it. The Saudi government did not respond to a request for comment from the Guardian. ‘Water down, weaken, remove’ In recent years, Saudi climate obstruction has expanded from the climate talks to many international environmental meetings. A plan to cap the production of plastic, supported by more than 100 nations, collapsed in August after opposition by Saudi Arabia and allies, which had also blocked voting in those negotiations A landmark deal for a carbon tax on shipping was stymied in October after Saudi Arabia – backing voting on this occasion – called a successful vote for a postponement, amid bullying by the US. Even at a UN desertification summit hosted by Saudi Arabia itself in 2024, nations failed to agree on a response to drought because the hosts refused to allow any mention of climate in the agreement. This full-spectrum assault on climate action was memorably described by Meyer as a “wrecking ball” last year. “They definitely are still in that mode,” he says.
Saudi Arabia has also consistently worked to weaken the influential reports of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, which are signed off by governments, Meyer says, “systematically trying to water down, weaken and remove” mentions of, for example, “net zero”, despite Riyadh having a 2060 net zero target. One startling fact illustrates the success of Saudi obstructionism. It took 28 years of annual UN Cop negotiations for the first mention of fossil fuels in the decision, at the Cop28 summit in Dubai in 2023, sparking an immediate fightback by the Saudis that left that strand of the talks a “debacle”, according to Depledge. The Saudis claimed the agreed “transition away from fossil fuels” was just one option on an “à la carte menu”. Monopolising fossil fuels It’s hard to grasp the scale of what Saudi Arabia is seeking to protect. Aramco was the world’s biggest oil and gas producer in 2024 and the kingdom has the second biggest proven oil reserves in the world (after Venezuela). Its oil is simple to extract, and its ability to quickly ramp up or cut production gives it the greatest influence over the global oil market, which it uses as part of the Opec+ cartel of oil exporters to manipulate the price of oil.
It costs just $2 to get a barrelful of oil out of the ground, Aramco’s chief executive, Amin Nasser, said in October, but that barrel has been selling for between $60 and $80 over the last year. The extraordinary profit margin meant that Aramco banked $250m of profit every day from 2016 to 2023, making it the world’s most profitable company over that period. “Saudi Arabia wants to prevent a strong global response to climate change because they see that as really threatening their economy, for reasons that are pretty damn obvious,” says Depledge. “Saudi Arabia depends on fossil exports for national survival [and] the regime regards the prospect of a green energy transition as an existential threat,” says historian Nils Gilman, writing recently in Foreign Policy. “The House of Saud uses its oil rents to finance both its domestic social order and its international influence.” For example, Saudi Arabia spent more on fossil fuel subsidies, keeping energy cheap for its subjects, than it did on its national health budget in 2023. “Its ambition is not to phase out fossil fuels, but to monopolise them as global supply tightens,” Gilman says, leaving Aramco as the last man standing. In 2024, Aramco had the largest near-term expansion plans for oil and gas production of any company in the world, 60% of which could not be burned in a 1.5C climate scenario. Aramco declined to comment.
Saudi Arabia is also working to ensure it keeps a steady flow of customers, even as rich nations decarbonise. The Guardian reported in 2023 the revelation of an “oil demand sustainability programme”, a huge global investment plan to spur demand for its oil and gas in Africa and elsewhere. Critics said the plan was designed to get countries “hooked on its harmful products”, driving up the use of fossil fuel-powered cars, buses and planes. Saudi’s oil cash makes up 60% of its government budget, although that is down from 90% a decade ago, as it seeks to diversify its economy away from oil through its Vision 2030 plan. That is a trillion-dollar project – from the $500bn futuristic city Neom to a desert-defying but troubled ski resort for the 2029 Asian Winter Games – but it faces a problem. In order to balance its budget, Saudi Arabia needs an oil price of $96 a barrel, according to Bloomberg Economics. “The core aim of Vision 2030 is to cut oil dependence,” says Ziad Daoud, chief emerging markets economist at Bloomberg. Yet “the kingdom has become more reliant on oil”.
‘Saudi Arabia wants to be a green country’ Karim Elgendy, the head of the Carboun Institute, the Middle East’s first independent climate and energy thinktank, says the apparent contradictions in Saudi oil policy around oil can be unravelled by seeing the current strategy as a three-point plan. The kingdom has always wanted to maintain its oil income, he says: “But Saudi Arabia realised around [2021] or so that the momentum behind the [green] energy transition is now unstoppable. Since then, the strategy has changed and the approach is now more of a trident.” “The first element of it is slowing down the global transition,” he says. “The second is decarbonising internally. It has found out that new [electricity] capacity is generated much, much cheaper by solar and wind.” This decarbonisation is the role of the Saudi Green Initiative, which is pushing towards half of electricity capacity being renewable by 2030 and a “flourishing” electric vehicle industry. Usefully, it also slashes Saudi Arabia’s enormous use of oil domestically – the fourth biggest in the world – meaning billions of dollars worth of more oil for export. As transport expert Anvita Arora at the King Abdullah Petroleum Studies and Research Center (Kapsarc) put it in 2022: “If we keep consuming our own oil, we won’t have any oil left to sell.” “The third element,” says Elgendy, “is to export every barrel, every molecule, of oil as fast as possible to fund the very thing Saudi Arabia wants to be in the future: diversified and decarbonised.” In essence, it is a race: Saudi Arabia is trying to sell enough oil to fund its transition from a petrostate before the world stops buying. “Saudi Arabia wants to be a green country,” he says. “It wants to be a player in the climate economy that is currently being forged, but it can only do so with the money that it is currently making from fossil fuel sales.” “At the moment, it is a rentier economy and the transition period is where it’s most at risk,” Elgendy says. “The goal is to shorten that period as much as possible, to shorten the darkness.”
The kingdom is also pushing the idea of a “carbon circular economy”, founded on the argument it often makes that oil is not the “devil” – it’s the emissions that are the climate danger. “They’ve been trying to play up carbon capture and storage (CCS), which could allow you to reduce emissions while continuing to use their product,” says Meyer. “But of course, the reality is that CCS is nowhere ready at scale to meet any substantial share of the emissions reductions needed.” Overall, Saudi Arabia’s national climate action is judged as “critically insufficient” by Climate Action Tracker, or at best “at the drawing board stage” by another analysis. ‘The verge of livability’ So what is the impact of global heating on the people in the desert kingdom itself? A Guardian analysis of more than a dozen recent scientific studies shows the climate crisis has already arrived and the outlook is daunting. “Saudi Arabia’s environmental parameters are already at the verge of livability,” a report by the King Abdullah University of Science and Technology (Kaust) and Kapsarc said in 2023. It is one of the hottest and most water-stressed countries on Earth. The report examined the consequences of a 3C hotter world for the kingdom – the world is on track to hit that by about 2100 – and found it would have “profound implications on the future viability of a sustainable and healthy society, and will likely manifest an existential crisis to Saudi Arabia”. But the country is already feeling the heat. The average temperature rose by 2.2C between 1979 and 2019, almost three times faster than the global rate, and even faster in Riyadh and Mecca, as the dry land of the Arabian peninsula was superheated by the climate crisis. The sun-scorched summers are worse – the temperature rose by 2.6C over those four decades. Saudi Arabia’s most important event – the hajj – has already been hit by extreme heat, with at least 1,300 Muslim pilgrims dying in a heatwave in 2024. The future could be much worse: the worst-case scenario for Saudi Arabia is apocalyptic: “ultra-extreme heatwaves” with temperatures up to 56C or higher and lasting several weeks, with summers an average 9C hotter. Even if carbon emissions are sharply cut and global temperature rise is limited to 2C, Saudi Arabia could have a 13-fold increase in heat-related death rates. This rises to a 63-fold increase in the worst-case scenario. Coastal cities such as Jeddah and Dammam face the additional risk of humid heat, which is even deadlier than dry heat, as it hinders cooling of the body through sweating. Drought is one of the biggest concerns, but too much water in the form of flash floods is already an increasing and deadly reality in Saudi Arabia, where more than 80% of people live in cities. “All major cities are vulnerable to flash floods,” said the Kaust-Kapsarc report. “Riyadh has witnessed more than 10 flood events in the past 30 years, which have claimed over 160 human lives and caused substantial socioeconomic losses.”
Sea levels are inexorably rising and the UN chief, António Guterres, has pointed out the “grim irony” of this being set to overwhelm coastal oil terminals, including the ports of Ras Tanura and Yanbu, operated by Aramco and used to transport 98% of the country’s oil exports, worth $214bn in 2023. Saudi Arabia’s enormous wealth means it has options not available to poorer nations, such as air conditioning and desalination of seawater. But, if these continue to be powered by fossil fuels, they create a vicious circle. “The insatiable energy appetite of modern cities drives further pollution and greenhouse gas emissions, amplifying the very conditions we seek to safeguard against,” said the Kaust-Kapsarc report. “At some point, the question will be: can they adapt to the impacts of climate change when it’s physically threatening to go outside your house for any period of time?” says Meyer. Collateral damage The problem with Saudi Arabia’s delaying tactics is that they cause collateral damage. “Delaying a fossil fuel phaseout only spells more death and destruction across the planet,” says Nikki Reisch at the Center for International Environmental Law in the US. “While Saudi Arabia and other Gulf states pursue plans to wean themselves off the fossil fuels they push on the rest of the world, nobody can escape the climate impacts that their products unleash – including their own populations.”
This week, Inger Andersen, head of the UN Environment Programme, said: “Every fraction of a degree avoided is crucial to reduce an escalation of the climate impacts that are harming all nations.” In the run-up to Cop30, it seems little has changed, with Saudi diplomats again reacting negatively to statements backing the “transition” away from fossil fuels agreed by all at Cop28 in 2023. In recent years, groups of nations determined to act have got together outside the UN process to push progress on, for example, renewables, coal and forests: “You have seen more efforts to do ‘coalitions of the willing’ that don’t require consensus decision-making,” says Meyer. “That’s harder for the Saudis to block.” Changing how UN climate summits themselves operate would be extremely difficult, but experts led by Depledge have suggested implementing voting based on a supermajority of seven-eighths of nations: “This would capture overwhelming support across the globe, while sidelining a tiny minority of obstructors.” One way to speed up the negotiations, they said, would be to sanction repeat procedural blockers, “just as delaying tactics in football can see offenders receive a yellow card”. They also argued that obstructionism should be taken into account when deciding who pays the money needed to help poorer countries recover from climate catastrophes: “Deliberate delay inside the UN climate talks is as bad as continuing to pump emissions into the atmosphere. Doing both – as Saudi Arabia does – is even worse.”
