Saudis face 'hidden energy crisis'

Source: Press TV
http://www.presstv.ir/detail/225438.html

Saudi Arabia is facing a “hidden energy crisis” and its vast domestic fuel consumption threatens its place in the world oil market, a report says.

According to a December 2011 report published by the British Chatham House non-governmental organization based in London, the “unrestrained” fuel consumption in Saudi Arabia shows that the current patterns of energy demand in the country are “wasting valuable resources.”

The patterns of energy demand in Saudi Arabia are also causing excessive pollution and making the country “vulnerable to economic and social crises,” the report adds.

Although Saudi Arabia is a member state of the Group of Twenty Finance Ministers and Central Bank Governors (G20) and the G20 members agreed in September 2009 to phase out “inefficient fossil fuel subsidies” in the medium term, Riyadh does not have an “overarching policy on energy consumption and claims it has no inefficient fossil fuel subsidies,” according to the Chatham House report.

The British organization also said in its report that the domestic energy consumption in Saudi Arabia could “limit its exports of oil within a decade.”

The Chatham House report added that the limitation in the Saudi oil exports would have “a severe effect on government spending, over 80 percent of which is dependent on oil revenues.”