Petroleum and Mineral Resources Minister Ali Al-Naimi addressing the OPEC Ministerial Council meeting at King Faisal Hall in Riyadh on Thursday. (AN photo by Khaled Al-Khamis)

RIYADH, 16 November 2007 — Minister of Petroleum and Mineral Resources Ali Al-Naimi joined other delegates at the OPEC Ministerial Council meeting yesterday in calling for greater efforts to reduce CO2 emissions and invest in new technology to curb environmental pollution.

Al-Naimi was chairing a session on climate change on the second day of the Ministerial Council meeting ahead of the two-day OPEC summit that opens tomorrow.

Delegates also voiced concern over the shortage of skilled manpower in the oil industry, which together with lack of investment in the downstream oil industry was exerting pressure on oil prices. And then there are factors beyond OPEC’s control that determine the price of oil.

Referring to concerns expressed earlier by speakers, including Subroto, former secretary general of OPEC, and Yvo de Boer, executive secretary of the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change, Al-Naimi said the Kingdom anticipated the impact when it established the King Fahd University of Petroleum and Minerals in Dhahran and was going ahead with the setting up of a world class King Abdullah University for Science and Technology (KAUST) in 2009. Both these universities address the challenges stemming from environmental concerns. As for the growing skills shortage in oil industry, he said Saudi Aramco had sponsored over 10,000 college graduates who are pursuing higher studies in petroleum.

On environmental pollution, the minister said: “Since fossil fuels are going to be around for some time, we need to develop technology to reduce carbon emissions. We are all called upon to address the climate-change concern and find a balance that is a possible, comprehensive and cost-effective solution... Saudi Arabia is willing to participate in any such project.”

Subroto underlined the skills shortage in the energy sector. He called for greater efforts to address this together with reliance on technological resources to tackle problems associated with climate change.

Subroto said the international financial market had played a useful role by funding environment-friendly energy projects. He said that because of the high cost of oil, the Indonesian government had to subsidize it to ease the financial burden on the people. At another level, the government was trying to tap alternative sources of energy, such as ethanol, to try to cool off the oil market.

Resisting US call to step up OPEC’s oil production, Algeria’s Energy Minister Chakib Khelil asked: “Why should we increase production?” He said a production hike would have no influence on prices and argued that the market was amply supplied and that the blame for near $100 prices lay outside the group.

His view was echoed by Iranian Oil Minister Gholam Hossein Nozari, who said in Tehran before leaving for Riyadh: “All evidence shows there is enough oil in the world’s oil market and increasing OPEC’s quota will not have an impact on the global oil price.”

Yvo de Boer, executive secretary of the Framework Convention of the United Nations, told delegates that the world faced an enormous challenge as global energy demand was expected to double by 2050 and renewable energy, such as wind power, constituted only a third of the energy supply.

“OPEC has an important role to play in investing in research and the development of clean technologies... emissions have to be reduced to secure our survival,” he said. He noted that the global temperature had risen by 3 degrees centigrade during the last three decades. The volume of green house gases had gone up by 70 percent, with carbon dioxide accounting for a larger share of this emission.

He said next month’s UN climate change conference in Bali, where negotiations on a new international climate change regime are to be launched, will be a make-or-break point for international efforts to stop the planet heating up.

“If things go wrong in Bali then we really are in deep trouble. If you get a wake-up call from science now and don’t act on it then that means you are in trouble,” he said, describing climate change as the most complicated issue facing the international community.