Now the Saudis are selling "green" oil to assuage our ecological concerns. I don't know if we've reached the tipping point where enough of us care about what oil drilling does to the environment.
CBS: They showed 60 Minutes their new $4 million experimental combustion engine they hope will increase gas mileage while it lowers CO-2 emissions.
"What we want to see is that there is an emphasis on also making this oil greener, and making the fossil fuels in general greener, because they're going to be with us for the long haul," Jum'ah said.
"Let me be blunt, okay? And ask you to be candid: is it Aramco’s hope to prevent a switch away from oil? Somebody said, 'The country is the oil business.' You absolutely need to do this for your own survival," Stahl remarked.
But Jum'ah asked what was wrong with that.
"I didn't say anything’s wrong with it. But it’s a fact. You'd admit it's a fact," Stahl asked.
"Yeah, we admit a fact that yes, we depend on the oil industry. We want it to help us, you know, to develop our economy and develop the economy of the world. So what is good for the wellbeing of Saudi Arabia should be good for the wellbeing of the world, too. So there's nothing wrong with that," he said.
"So what do you say to people out there, like Al Gore and now Mr. Obama, that say we have to devote ourselves, devote ourselves, to reducing our dependence on oil?" Stahl asked.
"My answer to this is we have to be realistic. We don't have the alternatives today," Jum'ah said.
"If there are alternatives, be my guest and come and bring them in. They are not there."
"You're saying whatever the world does in terms of wind, nuclear, coal, we're still going to need oil, and a lot of it?" Stahl asked.
"You're still going to need oil, and…a lot of it," he replied.
