Future Investment Initiative

[M029-03] · سمو وزير الطاقة (HRH the Minister of Energy) · التوقيت 00:00:33 · Future Investment Initiative · 2021-01-27 · مشاهدة عند هذا التوقيت

Pleasure to be with you.

[M029-05] · سمو وزير الطاقة (HRH the Minister of Energy) · التوقيت 00:00:52 · Future Investment Initiative · 2021-01-27 · مشاهدة عند هذا التوقيت

Well, I am very appreciative of the recognition, I can think on behalf of our leadership; King Salman, His Royal Highness Crown Prince Mohammed, the team that I work with in the Ministry of Energy and the rest of government agencies that worked with us in this endeavor, I have to emphasize that it has been a holistic approach, inclusive of our partners in OPEC and OPEC Plus, along with our partners at the G20 for having to work with us in trying to mitigate the situation.

[M029-06] · سمو وزير الطاقة (HRH the Minister of Energy) · التوقيت 00:01:51 · Future Investment Initiative · 2021-01-27 · مشاهدة عند هذا التوقيت

Obviously the situation prevailing then and still with us would require multifaceted approaches with a cohesive, coherent and collective efforts, these efforts are going to be with us, they are continuous and I believe that with the successes that everybody is noticing, it is more emphasizing the importance of the continuity of the institutional setups and organization.

[M029-07] · سمو وزير الطاقة (HRH the Minister of Energy) · التوقيت 00:02:35 · Future Investment Initiative · 2021-01-27 · مشاهدة عند هذا التوقيت

So in this endeavor we did focus on attending to The COVID situation and the havoc rendered in the world economy and as always, we have been saying in Saudi Arabia, COVID for us, as Saudi and a Saudi government is first and foremost a humanitarian issue rather than an economical issue, and therefore we have been trying to keep sight with so many things, we were attending to our home situation in terms of the health and well-being of our citizens even at a compromise with our local economy, we have been emphasizing inducing and introducing many programs to alleviate some of the impacts on our economy and yet also we continued to attend to our vision.

[M029-08] · سمو وزير الطاقة (HRH the Minister of Energy) · التوقيت 00:03:51 · Future Investment Initiative · 2021-01-27 · مشاهدة عند هذا التوقيت

Vision 2030 is crucial for all of us and in 2020 we have been challenged of how can we continue the vision programs and yet mitigate the problems that we have. So I think the Americans have a good say “When the going gets tough, the tough gets going”.

[M029-10] · سمو وزير الطاقة (HRH the Minister of Energy) · التوقيت 00:04:23 · Future Investment Initiative · 2021-01-27 · مشاهدة عند هذا التوقيت

And indeed, I am proud to be a Saudi citizen because the tough got going and because of that there is one major caveat for that, why it happened. Unfortunately in this room, you do not see the thousands and thousands of young Saudis working at all government agencies in the private sector, state-owned enterprises. Two days ago, I was attending an event of our new identity as a ministry, and I did say and I will continue to say that the energy ministry is energized by the energy of the youth, so welcome to the new Saudi Arabia, where the youth are attending to the situation. It is a new Saudi Arabia with a new set of challenges, but it is a new Saudi Arabia with young, breed, youthful, enabled, aspiring, and hopefully in the future will be inspiring, determined young Saudis that will be running the future of this country.

[M029-12] · سمو وزير الطاقة (HRH the Minister of Energy) · التوقيت 00:06:17 · Future Investment Initiative · 2021-01-27 · مشاهدة عند هذا التوقيت

Well, we are headed by two Supreme committees, one that deals with the hydrocarbons and the other deals with the energy mix. The fundamental change in Saudi Arabia, which is being noticed and will continue to be noticed. In fact, we took it upon ourselves that we will set the pace, we are running a huge program on energy mix that will convert the use of Saudi Arabia domestic use in power sector towards, with a program we call it fuel disbursement program whereby we will be converting 50% of our power sector fuel to gas and the rest will be coming from renewable sources.

[M029-13] · سمو وزير الطاقة (HRH the Minister of Energy) · التوقيت 00:07:16 · Future Investment Initiative · 2021-01-27 · مشاهدة عند هذا التوقيت

In tandem with that, we will be saving thousands and hundreds of thousands of barrels of oil that are going to waste, while set we could export them. We have been progressively moving with our efficiency program and the efficiency program will continue, we have instigated a price reform program, and that program will continue, we have been very mindful and watchful of the issue of climate change, so we have improved our resilience in terms of both mitigating and adapting to climate change, we have companies that stuck records in terms of reduction of emissions, we as a government in this country are committed to the issue of emission neutrality, and again we are also aspiring with this new program that we have been started and we will be working and happy to be working with in any type of collaboration with international collaboration on the circular carbon economy, which will help us both ways.

[M029-14] · سمو وزير الطاقة (HRH the Minister of Energy) · التوقيت 00:08:38 · Future Investment Initiative · 2021-01-27 · مشاهدة عند هذا التوقيت

We have a program, we call it Hydrocarbon Sustainability Program, which is to rise up to the challenge of any potential of reduction of the consumption of the conventional uses of hydrocarbon, so we have a serious young team who are working on how can we convert the hydrocarbon molecules to different uses and the more creative we are with this program, the more we will create or generate new demand for hydrocarbon. As a product of this beginning, we noticed that there is this concept of circular economy, so what we did is to try to improve it and add the word carbon to it, which means that the sustainability program and the circular carbon economy program will work hands on hand, whereby we will convert and create demand for hydrocarbon, yet we will be mitigating any potential of emissions be it in the conventional uses of hydrocarbon or be it in the new uses of hard hydrocarbon.

[M029-15] · سمو وزير الطاقة (HRH the Minister of Energy) · التوقيت 00:10:15 · Future Investment Initiative · 2021-01-27 · مشاهدة عند هذا التوقيت

In fact, CCE would enable us to make use of these emissions and instead of them going to waste, we can, through recycling or re-use, convert them to useful materials for additional products to be produced. SABIC is doing that, Aramco is doing that and you will see us doing a lot of that. We will be another Germany when it comes to renewable which is 50% of renewable, we are working with so many countries on green hydrogen and blue hydrogen and easily and simply, I could say that we will be pioneering more of that blue hydrogen and green hydrogen, we have already good friends from Europe and many places are lining up to partner with us in this endeavor. Again, my ambitions is nothing more than a mirror reflection of the young breed and young cadets of youthful, ambitious and determined team that will convert these ambitions into a reality very soon.

[M029-17] · سمو وزير الطاقة (HRH the Minister of Energy) · التوقيت 00:12:11 · Future Investment Initiative · 2021-01-27 · مشاهدة عند هذا التوقيت

Well, like 2020 and 2021 I hope it is going to be less challenging than 2020 because I honestly no executive in anywhere, be it banking, energy or even medical or anywhere. We would hope to have another go for another 2020. For God sake, we just celebrated the New Year, and let us hope for a better year, but in all, I think realistically, there is great some legacies or leftovers to be attended to, I remain cautious that we should maintain our hands on the situation, until we are very comfortable that vaccines are spread and used and people vaccinate. As a result of that, lockdowns can come down and we go to a more of a state of normality. Once that happens, yes, we can get into a sort of sigh of relief and we move on, but moving on would require resilience and would require also additional efforts to ensure that we regain what we lost in 2020 and move forward progressively to a world economy growth pattern and the domestic growth.

[M029-19] · سمو وزير الطاقة (HRH the Minister of Energy) · التوقيت 00:15:33 · Future Investment Initiative · 2021-01-27 · مشاهدة عند هذا التوقيت

Well, there is no better person to talk about this than Patrick and I mean Nasser he is somewhere sitting here, because I think we did a lot of work for them, so maybe Patrick was the best person to KPI our performance.

[M029-21] · سمو وزير الطاقة (HRH the Minister of Energy) · التوقيت 00:28:35 · Future Investment Initiative · 2021-01-27 · مشاهدة عند هذا التوقيت

Well, for everything there are enablers. I think people need first to be given the flexibility like what we are doing with the circular carbon economy, people need to be given the flexibility to achieve emission reductions in every possible meaningful way that they can. So long as we all congregate and that is why we believe in CCE as the proper congregator of the willing parties to engage in serious effort, elaborate effort to reduction of emissions, we should not be too facetious about from where we getting. I know Europe is going one way. Everybody should be left to do to do it in his own way, so long as we all achieve, I think what fundamentally Paris Agreement is calling for which is reduction of emissions to make sure that we achieve the targets of the Paris Agreement.

[M029-22] · سمو وزير الطاقة (HRH the Minister of Energy) · التوقيت 00:29:51 · Future Investment Initiative · 2021-01-27 · مشاهدة عند هذا التوقيت

We as Saudi Arabia are a stunish believer in the Paris Agreement and we will do everything in our book, as a government, to enable our government companies to achieve also their targets, which again, the difference between us and I think this morning, Patrick and me spent some time discussing elaborately few things, we have a better case for reducing emissions and achieving our energy mix targets and actually producing and multiplying the effect and impact in our economy in a positive way than probably any other country in the world.

[M029-23] · سمو وزير الطاقة (HRH the Minister of Energy) · التوقيت 00:30:45 · Future Investment Initiative · 2021-01-27 · مشاهدة عند هذا التوقيت

With carbon sequestration, we can do a lot, with converting gas to nitrogen, we can do a lot, by the fuel displacement program, we can increase our exports of hydrocarbon by a lot. If we induce more efficiency, which we are, we can even export more, if we are to be compared as Aramco or SABIC among their own elites, I think both of them would stand quite tall when it comes to achieving targets. If you KPI Aramco or SABIC achievements in terms of reduction of emissions. I leave that Patrick to say a few words on that, or Mukesh also can share his thoughts on that.

[M029-24] · سمو وزير الطاقة (HRH the Minister of Energy) · التوقيت 00:31:48 · Future Investment Initiative · 2021-01-27 · مشاهدة عند هذا التوقيت

We stand to benefit actually from Paris Agreement. As long as we are not to avoid what has been agreed in Paris agreement, so we will assure everybody in planet Earth not only we are committed to the Paris Agreement, we are actually going to make a lot of use of Paris Agreement and it will be a good successful agreement for us because it would bring us lots of economic growth and lots of diversity.

[M029-26] · سمو وزير الطاقة (HRH the Minister of Energy) · التوقيت 00:40:02 · Future Investment Initiative · 2021-01-27 · مشاهدة عند هذا التوقيت

Yes, just emphasizing one thing. Whatever we will be doing in Saudi Arabia would support emission reduction, so we are doing it willingly because the economic case for it is huge. When we convert to renewable and gas and save the liquids as one example, a huge amount of reduction will come as a result of this, the transformative bodies apparently that we will be changing along with the new conversions would become more efficient. Plant and industries will be plugged with electricity instead of them fueling themselves. Desalination plants, for example, will go to an RO technology which means plugging your desalination plant to electricity instead of them fueling themselves and so on. The case for us is there and we will also enjoy being looked at as a reasonable and a good international citizen, because we are delivering, I will argue, probably much more than what many European countries will deliver in 2030.