“On top of that you add the low oil price and political and security risk, and this does not make a good environment for investment,” Nakhle said. “I don’t think it will be reversed any time soon, not within at least the next four to five years.”
According to a 2015 paper by Wang Tao, of Carnegie-Tsinghua Center for Global Policy, Beijing, high-sulphur petcoke burnt to generate power and heat emits “11 per cent more greenhouse gas than coal, and nearly twice the emissions of natural gas”.
"This is the right time for carbon tax," Deborah Gordon, director of Energy and Climate Program in Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, told Xinhua.
"The whole thing fits into the change taking place in Saudi Arabia," said Carol Nakhle, founder of Crystol Energy in Abu Dhabi. "This is part of major reform and a signal the government is serious about moving forward with its agenda."
"Now, the countries who supply oil, the U.S. included, each wanted to produce oil first and wanted anyone else to shut down and to freeze their oil," Deborah Gordon, director of Energy and Climate Program in Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, told Xinhua.
"On the margin, it is possible that some investment into clean energy is slowing down due to falling fossil fuel prices," David Livingston, an associate in the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace’s Energy and Climate Program, said by email. "I would expect the most impact in areas where clean energy is attempting to compete with fossil fuels."
Iran is in a better position than Saudi Arabia against lower oil prices, said David Livingston, an associate at the energy and climate program, with the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace in London on Wednesday.
There is certainly a logic to privatizing Aramco, Perry Cammack and David Livingston of the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace note, adding, however, that although privatizing of the Saudi oil giant is attractive, it is unlikely.
"The impact today will be less than if this had taken place in 2010," says David Livingston, an associate in the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace's Energy and Climate Program.
The imprecise use of swing producer as a “crutch phrase” to describe America’s shale industry has real-world consequences, said David Livingston, an associate in the energy and climate program of the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace.