Many ‘doubted the vision’: Saudi investment minister touts ‘green shoring’ on path to diversification
Khalid Al-Falih, Saudi Arabia’s investment minister, during the Bloomberg New Economy Forum in Singapore, on Wednesday, Nov. 8, 2023.
Bloomberg | Bloomberg | Getty Images
Saudi Minister of Investment Khalid al-Falih pushed back against skepticism over the country’s economic diversification plan, as Riyadh touts “green shoring” investment opportunities to woo foreign financing.
“There was many people who doubted the vision, the ambition, how broad and deep and comprehensive it is, and whether the development of a country like KSA who is so dependent for so many decades on a commodity business like oil would be able to do what we are aspiring to do with Vision 2030,” al-Falih told CNBC’s Steve Sedgwick on Saturday at the Ambrosetti Forum in Cernobbio, Italy.
One of the largest economies in the Middle East and a key U.S. ally in the region, Saudi Arabia has been shoring up investments in a bid to materialize Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman’s Vision 2030 economic diversification program, which spans 14 giga-projects, including the Neom industrial complex.
Under this initiative, Riyadh seeks to pivot away from its historical dependence on oil revenues — which the International Monetary Fund now sees rising until 2026, before starting to descend — and hopes to draw financial flows in the domestic economy exceeding $3 trillion, as well as push foreign domestic investment to $100 billion a year by 2030.
The Saudi minister on Saturday said that, eight years into manifesting Vision 2030, the kingdom is now “more committed, more determined” to the program and has already implemented or is about to complete 87% of its targets. Critics of the plan have previously questioned whether Riyadh will successfully deliver on its goals by its stated deadline.
In recent years, the kingdom has been attempting to liberalize its market and improve its business environment with reforms to its investment and labor laws — but has also formulated less popular requirements for companies to set up their regional headquarters in Saudi Arabia to access government contracts.
The number of foreign investment licenses issued in Saudi Arabia nearly doubled in 2023, the IMF noted, with government data pointing to a 5.6% annual increase in net flows of foreign direct investment in the first quarter.
Concerns have nevertheless lingered over the potential uncertainty and unpredictability of the kingdom’s legal framework and its dispute resolution system for foreign investment. Al-Falih insisted that Saudi Arabia boasts predictability, as well as domestic political and economic stability.
‘Green shoring’
The Saudi investment minister said that part of Riyadh’s offering to foreign investors is the Saudi-coined initiative of “green shoring,” which seeks to decarbonize supply chains in areas with renewable energy resources.
“Green shoring is basically saying you need to do more of the high energy processing [and] manufacturing value add in areas where the materials, as well as the energy, are [located],” al-Falih said, adding that Saudi Arabia has the logistics, capital and infrastructure to achieve this.
Under Vision 2030, the world’s largest oil exporter aims to achieve net-zero emissions by 2060. Along with its neighbor, the United Arab Emirates — which hosted the 2023 gathering of the annual U.N. Conference of the Parties — Riyadh has been a high-profile presence at climate summits, but has still drawn questions over its commitment to decarbonization.
Riyadh — along with other members of the Organization of the Petroleum Exporting Countries oil alliance — has repeatedly called for the simultaneous use of hydrocarbons and green resources in order to avoid energy shortages throughout the global transition to net-zero emissions.
Some climate activists have also criticized Saudi Arabia’s promotion of solutions like carbon capture and storage (CCS) technologies as a smokescreen to push ahead with its lucrative oil business.
As part of “green shoring,” Saudi Arabia sets out to “address global supply chain resilience issues” and “build a new global economy that is certainly moving more electric, as we bring the copper, as we bring the lithium, the cobalt, the other critical materials, rare earth metals, as we address semiconductor shortages, green fertilizers, green chemicals,” al-Falih stressed.
Environment
Elon Musk Tapped to Lead New ‘DOGE’ Department—Despite the Government Already Having One for Efficiency
Tesla CEO Elon Musk is to officially join Trump’s administration as the co-head of the new US Department of Government Efficiency – a second federal department with the goal of making government spending more efficient.
You can’t get more ironic than that.
Throughout the elections, Musk, who is already CEO of Tesla, and SpaceX, a well as the defacto head of X, xAI, Neuralink, and the Boring Company, has been floating the idea to add to his workload by joining the Trump’s administration to lead a new department aimed at making the federal government more efficient.
He has been calling it the “Department of Government Efficiency”, which spells out ‘DOGE’, a meme that Musk appears to enjoy.
Well, now Trump appears to want to be going through with this idea.
He announced the new department and Musk as head, along with Vivek Ramaswamy, in a statement today:
I am pleased to announce that the Great Elon Musk, working in conjunction with American Patriot Vivek Ramaswamy, will lead the Department of Government Efficiency (“DOGE”). Together, these two wonderful Americans will pave the way for my Administration to dismantle Government Bureaucracy, slash excess regulations, cut wasteful expenditures, and restructure Federal Agencies – Essential to the “Save America” Movement. “This will send shockwaves through the system, and anyone involved in Government waste, which is a lot of people!” stated Mr. Musk.
What’s most ironic is that there’s already a federal department with the goal of cutting government waste and ensuring efficiency: the Government Accountability Office (GAO).
The GAO’s main objectives are:
- auditing agency operations to determine whether federal funds are being spent efficiently and effectively;
- investigating allegations of illegal and improper activities;
- reporting on how well government programs and policies are meeting their objectives;
- performing policy analyses and outlining options for congressional consideration;
- issuing legal decisions and opinions;
- advising Congress and the heads of executive agencies about ways to make government more efficient and effective
It sounds similar to what Musk described when talking about his DOGE, but Trump hasn’t gone into many details other than it will “cut waste.”
He also has a confusing message as he compares the initiative, which is supposed to cut government spending, to “The Manhattan project”, a massive and expensive government project.
Trump said that DOGE will help the government “drive large scale structural reform”:
It will become, potentially, “The Manhattan Project” of our time. Republican politicians have dreamed about the objectives of “DOGE” for a very long time. To drive this kind of drastic change, the Department of Government Efficiency will provide advice and guidance from outside of Government, and will partner with the White House and Office of Management & Budget to drive large scale structural reform, and create an entrepreneurial approach to Government never seen before.
The statement also noted that DOGE will only operate until July 4, 2026.
Musk has previously claimed that he could cut at least $2 trillion dollars of the $6.5 trillion dollar US federal budget.
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A pump jack in Midland, Texas, US, on Thursday, Oct. 3, 2024.
Anthony Prieto | Bloomberg | Getty Images
Oil prices may see a drastic fall in the event that oil alliance OPEC+ unwinds its existing output cuts, said market watchers who are predicting a bearish year ahead for crude.
“There is more fear about 2025’s oil prices than there has been since years — any year I can remember, since the Arab Spring,” said Tom Kloza, global head of energy analysis at OPIS, an oil price reporting agency.
“You could get down to $30 or $40 a barrel if OPEC unwound and didn’t have any kind of real agreement to rein in production. They’ve seen their market share really dwindle through the years,” Kloza added.
A decline to $40 a barrel would mean around a 40% erasure of current crude prices. Global benchmark Brent is currently trading at $72 a barrel, while U.S. West Texas Intermediate futures are around $68 per barrel.
Oil prices year-to-date
Given that oil demand growth next year probably won’t be much more than 1 million barrels a day, a full unwinding of OPEC+ supply cuts in 2025 would “undoubtedly see a very steep slide in crude prices, possibly toward $40 a barrel,” Henning Gloystein, head of energy, climate and resources at Eurasia Group, told CNBC.
Similarly, MST Marquee’s senior energy analyst Saul Kavonic posited that should OPEC+ unwind cuts without regard to demand, it would “effectively amount to a price war over market share that could send oil to lows not seen since Covid.”
However, the alliance is more likely to opt for a gradual unwinding early next year, compared to a full scale and immediate one, the analysts said.
Should the producers group proceed with their production plan, the market surplus could nearly double.
Martoccia Francesco
Energy strategist at Citi
The oil cartel has been exercising discipline in maintaining its voluntary output cuts, to the point of extending them.
In September, OPEC+ postponed plans to begin gradually rolling back on the 2.2 million barrels per day of voluntary cuts by two months in an effort to stem the slide of oil prices. The 2.2 million bpd cut, which was implemented over the second and third quarters, had been due to expire at the end of September.
At the start of this month, the oil cartel again decided to delay the planned oil output increase by another month to the end of December.
Oil prices have been weighed by a sluggish post-Covid recovery in demand from China, the world’s second-largest economy and leading crude oil importer. In its monthly report released Tuesday, OPEC lowered its 2025 global oil demand growth forecast from 1.6 million barrels per day to 1.5 million barrels per day.
The pressured prices were also conflagrated by a perceivably oversupplied market, especially as key oil producers outside the OPEC alliance like the U.S., Canada, Guyana and Brazil are also planning to add supply, Gloystein highlighted.
Bearish year ahead for oil
The market consensus is that there’ll be a “substantial” oil stock build next year, said Citibank energy strategist Martoccia Francesco.
“Should the producers group proceed with their production plan, the market surplus could nearly double… reaching as much as 1.6 million barrels per day,” said Francesco.
Even if OPEC+ doesn’t unwind the cuts, the future ofl prices is still looking break. Citi analysts expect Brent price to average $60 per barrel next year.
Further fueling the bearish outlook is the incoming administration of U.S. President-elect Donald Trump, whose return is associated by some with a potential trade war, said analysts who spoke to CNBC.
“If we do get a trade war — and a lot of economists think that a trade war is possible, and particularly against China — we could see much, much lower prices,” said OPIS’ Kloza.
Trump has also touted a “drill baby drill” policy for U.S. producers, vowing to cut energy prices in half.
For that to happen to retail gasoline prices, oil would need to drop to “below $40” per barrel, said Matt Smith, Kpler’s lead oil analyst.
Right now, retail gasoline prices are at a “sweet spot” at $3 per gallon, where consumers do not feel the pinch and input prices are still sufficiently high for producers, Smith added.
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