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THE 966 explores the news, people, and issues that define the Kingdom through conversations and interviews with business leaders, officials, and newsmakers. THE 966 goes beyond the headlines and tackles the complex U.S.-Saudi relationship, discussing topics like oil and energy, security and defense, Saudi culture and society, and much more.
The 966, Episode #135
Clean Hydrogen Economy in Saudi Arabia, Domestic Developments and International Opportunities with Rami Shabaneh, Senior Fellow, King Abdullah Petroleum Studies and Research Center
[The 966 host] Richard Wilson (00:02.259)
Hi, Rami. Wonderful to have you with us. I've done an introduction separately. I want to congratulate you, by the way. mean, this edited work, the Clean Hydrogen Economy in Saudi Arabia, Domestic Developments and International Opportunities, which was just published in April, is quite extraordinary. And the reason I want to compliment you is because it's not only is it comprehensive. mean, 28 chapters examines not only the hydrogen proposition in Saudi Arabia, but in the US, China, Europe, Russia, Australia, the globe entirely, any number of things, but it's very accessible. The chapters are well organized, well written. I just really well done. So, I want to commend you on that to begin with.
Rami Shabaneh (00:46.434)
Yeah, thank you very much. And yeah, thanks to the co -editors that really helped in taking this to the finish lines and to the authors. I mean, we had a great list of authors that contributed to this work. You know, they come from different backgrounds, from national and international entities, NGOs, think tanks, and from academia as well.
Richard Wilson (01:12.327)
Yes, again, I recommend this to anybody interested in the topic, and it's an interesting topic. I also want to commend you, Rami, because you and I spoke in preparation for this episode, and I don't believe I'm needed for this conversation. You are so thoroughly well versed in the topic. And when we laid out the framework and you said, well, this is what we should do. This is what we should do. It was outstanding. So, we're just going to jump into it. And again, I really want to thank you in advance for your expertise because I don't think you'll hear much from me in this conversation. So, let's begin, Rami. Very simple question. Why hydrogen? Why now?
Rami Shabaneh (02:28.674)
Yeah, so hydrogen is a very versatile molecule. It's very abundant as well. And it's versatile in a way that you can technically replace fossil fuels with hydrogen. And combustion of hydrogen does not release CO2. But the big support or the big momentum behind hydrogen is really to support or to decarbonize these sectors that are hard to electrify.
You know, we've seen renewable energy costs have declined drastically in the past 15 to 16 years. And renewable energy will pretty much be the backbone of the energy transition. And that will supply energy to a system that will rely heavily on end -use electrification, you know, like electric vehicles, electric heat pumps to heat buildings and so on. But there are sectors of the economy where electrification is just not viable.
And hydrogen is a contender. So, hydrogen could fit into those sectors that are difficult to electrify. And those could include long haul transport, like aviation, like the maritime sector, the shipping sector, also iron and steel, industries that require high temperature heat. But we shouldn't look at those as mutually exclusive with green electrons or green molecules, one is going to complement the other. And I think the value that hydrogen actually brings to the system is that at a highly electrified system where you have a high penetration of variable renewable energy is that it could capture that surplus electricity, for example, and store it for a long time. You can transport the hydrogen then and use it somewhere else. So, it gives space, time, and value option to renewable electricity.
But to what extent it could play a role that will all depend on the technological advancements that we see in hydrogen vis -a -vis other low carbon solutions. Also depends on government policies, market demand. All of these will have influence on the uptake of hydrogen.
Richard Wilson (04:43.537)
Well, and I think we'll get into the governor of policies, markets, sort of thing, because I mean, those are so critical to whether this is going to rise or fall. But what does clean, or low carbon hydrogen mean?
Rami Shabaneh (05:01.42)
Yeah, that's important to define since it's in the title of the book as well. We use the word clean hydrogen. But these definitions are very subjective. As I mentioned, hydrogen is very abundant on Earth. The issue is that it's never found alone in a pure form. It's always, at least not in abundance, it's always bound to something or combined with another atom.
We can find it in water, you can find it in natural gas, and so you need energy to split and separate and produce that hydrogen. We do that today, most of the hydrogen is produced from hydrocarbons, from natural gas and coal as well, but the CO2 that is emitted from there just is vented to the atmosphere. We use unabated processes, but in order for hydrogen to play a role, you know, those configuration needs to be adjusted in a way where you can capture this CO2 or use other methods like, for example, using electrolysis of water, separating the water molecule, and using renewable energy to power that electrolyser. And so, you know, we kind of used the color codes for, or the color wheel to signify a production process like producing hydrogen from natural gas using carbon capture and storage, that's called blue hydrogen, producing it from water using renewable energy, electrolysis that we call that green hydrogen.
But those colors, I mean, they're useful to summarize that production pathway, but not really useful in giving us the carbon intensity of that hydrogen. And so, when we use in our book, in our definition, what we use clean as a term to just signify any process that minimizes or eliminates CO2 in the production process of hydrogen. But in reality, governments are coming, and lot of national strategies and certification schemes are coming out with these labels like clean and green or low carbon and everyone's defining it independently.
Rami Shabaneh (07:22.37)
That's going to cause an issue, think, in the future, especially when we come to trade, because what I define as clean is going to be different than what you define as clean. So, we really need to come to a similar framework, at least with the carbon accounting framework. So, we're all working with the same Excel sheet, calculating those carbon intensities. And then we could decide if this meets my requirements.
Richard Wilson (07:46.737)
And that sort of globally accepted framework doesn't exist now.
Rami Shabaneh (07:52.366)
No, it doesn't exist. There are efforts to mutually recognize the different certification schemes. That's something that was highlighted in Dubai in COP 28 last year. And there was, you know, about 37 governments that got together and signed this declaration of intent to find a way to how to deal with this issue and find, you know, how to create kind of a universal kind of a scheme or a carbon methodology to calculate the carbon intensities and kind of work together and not work in silos because if really if hydrogen wants to go into this market, a deeper market where you have trade, wrinkles need to be ironed out.
Richard Wilson (08:40.659)
Let's turn to Saudi Arabia and hydrogen. And the description of the book is that it provides a first of its kind analysis of the emerging global hydrogen economy from the vantage point of one of the world's biggest energy providers, Saudi Arabia. And it notes the kingdom is optimally situated geographically between the major demand markets in Europe and North Asia from where it can leverage clean hydrogen exports as potential tool to become a player of strategic importance. And it might add that it also has some low cost renewable energy as inputs. Let's talk about clean hydrogen economy in Saudi Arabia and maybe begin by briefly discussing the book, the idea behind it, what you were trying to get to in terms of answering questions.
Rami Shabaneh (09:34.094)
So, the idea of the book came in 2020. This was the year that Saudi's presidency of the G20. That was the year when they unveiled the circular carbon economy, which is the framework that will enable Saudi Arabia to get to net zero. And so, there were two bold announcements that were made during that year. The first one was the announcement to construct the largest green hydrogen, green ammonia plant in Neom, Saudi Arabia. And then two months after that, they announced this pilot shipment or demonstration shipment of the first ever blue ammonia cargo that went from Saudi Arabia to Japan. And so we were, you know, taken aback by this in a good way. And we asked ourselves, you know, where's this going?
You know, it's like stepping out into the dark, you know, we...no one knew, we still don't know where the Hydrogen economy is going, especially four years ago, we didn't know where it was going. And so, we got together, got to team together and said, let's, let's, you know, explore this more. And so, we came up with the idea of the book, basically to answer three questions. And that's how the book, by the way, is split, is separated into these three parts. The first one is on the domestic developments, you know, what are the challenges and opportunities for Saudi Arabia to develop their hydrogen value chain and become a player in a global market.
Then the second question, as you mentioned in your introduction, looks at the international level. So basically, asking the question, how do others perceive hydrogen and the role of hydrogen? And what implications might that have on Saudi Arabia, whether they're an importing country or an exporting country potentially?
And then the third question, you know, the third part focuses on the technology aspect, the technical aspects of it. So, it looks at the technologies, the different technologies of hydrogen, and then kind of looks at what the research gaps are for Saudi Arabia to fulfill in order to play a role in a future hydrogen economy.
Richard Wilson (11:49.779)
So, you're talking about the drivers. the G20 2020, the Saudi Green Initiative, Middle East Green Initiative. Saudi Arabia set some emission reduction goals, greenhouse gas goals, and would like to be net zero by 2060, correct? Saudi Aramco, maybe 2050, is that accurate?
Richard Wilson (12:16.627)
As a layman, let's talk about green hydrogen because at the end of the day Saudi Arabia is going to be focusing on green and blue. And this is a layman. the blue, as I understand it, so as you said, the color wheel. But there's designations of essentially how dependent the production of that hydrogen is on carbon emitting inputs. So, for example, green would be 100 % renewable energy, so no carbon emitting inputs. Blue would be something like that you're trying to do with Jafurah, which would be based on natural gas, is ultimately fossil fuel, obviously has more carbon emissions than... solar or wind? this, can you tell me, is that accurate?
Rami Shabaneh (13:22.158)
Yeah, I mean, obviously with renewable energy, especially if you have the renewable energy connected directly to the electrolyser, I mean, you can get pretty low carbon intensity when it comes to green hydrogen. But it all depends again on the carbon accounting. Are we measuring the carbon footprint of the solar cell or the electrolyser that we manufactured? I mean, that came from somewhere. Do we include that in our carbon accounting?
And if so, that will have some carbon estimates for it, carbon intensity that would add to it. With blue hydrogen as well, I blue hydrogen could be also from natural gas, but if you produce that natural gas responsibly, it all depends on the methane leakages, because it depends really on how you're calculating the carbon intensity, which I talked about is this is where we're trying to get a good metric of where all these production pathways sit when it comes to carbon intensity. Where do we start?
Where do we finish? With blue hydrogen, like you said, from natural gas, it could be, you could emit a lot of emissions if, for example, you didn't produce that gas responsibly. There's a lot of flaring in the field, a lot of methane emissions throughout the supply chain until you get it to the reformer to make hydrogen.
And then when you make the hydrogen, how much of that carbon are you capturing? Is it 60 %? Is it 70 %? Is it 99%, which is possible for some technologies? So, you could, in some technologies, in some setups or configuration with blue hydrogen, you could get a very low carbon intensity. So, it all depends on that setup. That could be comparable even to green hydrogen in some cases.
Richard Wilson (15:07.651)
And let me throw in here, you're talking about flaring and we're not talking about flaring in Saudi Arabia. In general, Saudi Arabia has its benchmarks against other national oil companies, international oil companies, that sort of thing. It does pretty well in terms of its methane emissions and essentially its carbon emissions. I'm not suggesting that it's a green wonder. I'm just saying that it's been very responsible in trying to contain in so far as it's able these emissions. Is that accurate?
Rami Shabaneh (15:45.486)
Yeah, I mean it has one of the lowest carbon or methane intensities in the world. They report about 0 .05 % methane intensity, which is very, very low. And I mean, for a country like Saudi Arabia where they really need the energy, especially the natural gas, they would try to capture as much of it as possible and not let any of it escape.
So, they do that due diligence to ensure that they are capturing all natural gas that's being produced, and flaring has been really minimized. I mean, since the levels we've seen in the seventies, and they really built clusters and industrial cities to capture that gas and use it to make value added products.
Richard Wilson (16:33.991)
Yeah. Is there a preference between green or blue hydrogen on the part of Saudi planners?
Rami Shabaneh (16:40.96)
No, and that's the thing with the CCE or the circular carbon economy where they are taking a very technologically agnostic approach. They are at end of the day, what they want to do is, you know, limit carbon dioxide or GHG images as much as possible. Theoretically Saudi Arabia could take a green only or a blue only pathway because they have enough resources in both, I think, to pick one strategy, but I don't think that's the optimal way or optimal volumes and optimal cost of hydrogen.
You always want to make sure that you're producing that hydrogen at the lowest cost possible, meaning you have to look for where you can produce it at the least cost from the green side and at the least cost from the blue side. And this way you can get the optimal cost at a level which is acceptable for the market.
And so, with Saudi Arabia, as you mentioned, there is a parallel approach to green and blue and maybe other technologies with nuclear in the future, we never know. But it's important also to understand the geography of Saudi Arabia, where all your natural gas, your oil and gas assets are all on the eastern side. Whereas as you go west, there's virtually no oil and gas production or facilities there.
And so, it makes sense to have your blue production at the east side, close to where your natural gas fields are. That's where all the industrial cities are as well. have to build a big industrial city. That's where all your CO2 storage deposits are as well, you know, using the depleted oil and gas reservoirs. And then as you go west, where there's no oil and gas facilities there, I mean, that could be ideal for... green hydrogen production. And you know, in the book, we actually took it a bit further. And we use some geospatial analysis to analyze, well, what if we put some strict sustainability criteria, like, you know, avoiding agricultural land, you know, protected areas, access to water, you know, away from urban development. And then what you get is, you know, hundreds of kilometers of coastline of really good quality like solar and wind to produce this hydrogen. So, I think Saudi Arabia is very unique in terms of its characteristics of what it can produce. And then you already have the industrial base that Saudi Arabia already has from its oil and gas sector. They've been producing hydrogen since the 70s.
And so, there's a lot of players coming into the market to produce hydrogen, but not a lot of them have that industrial capability that Saudi Arabia had, this history of dealing with hydrogen, because hydrogen is not an easy gas to deal with. It's pretty challenging. I think that know -how will help them in the future for the clean part.
Richard Wilson (19:57.799)
I want to get to that. that was, by the way, that was a very interesting graphic, what you just described. And it was also interesting to read that NEOM, where they're looking at producing green hydrogen, and that the NEOM Green Hydrogen Corporation is already well on its way. It's got a major US partner. It's got an off -take agreement. But it gets enormous rates of solar exposure during the day and tremendous wind at night. the renewable energy inputs are there. So, it was interesting. Anyway, there's so many factors in this book. It's crazy.
But let's talk about it, because the hydrogen economy is still yet to be determined. I mean, if it's viable, if it's going to ever be something we're going to transition to, that's my understanding of it.
How competitive is Saudi Arabia's hydrogen production vis -à -vis the rest of the world?
Rami Shabaneh (20:53.806)
Yeah, so it's pretty competitive. mean, we've done some analysis on the cost and its potential it can be, you know, at the lower end of the cost curve. We could see, you know, 15 percent up to even 30 percent decrease in cost from green hydrogen today versus 2030. And but, you know, there are other countries as well that are ambitious, have the same ambition to build out their hydrogen value chain and become global exporters, especially in the MENA region. They have really good quality solar, really good quality wind. And some of them as well sit in proximity to energy future demand markets like Europe and Asia. And so, it's going to be a very different competitive landscape than with oil because the beauty of hydrogen is you can produce it with many different inputs, primary resources.
So, with oil, you're competitive depending on where your deposits are. You have really good reservoirs, good deposits, you're a low -cost producer. With hydrogen, because it could be produced from so many different sources, if you have these sources or one of them or two of them, you can really become very competitive and you have a competitive advantage as well.
And so, we're seeing, for example, countries like Morocco, Tunisia, Egypt to a lesser extent, are traditionally energy importing countries now trying to play a big role in the future hydrogen market and becoming global exporters potentially. But at the end of the day, think, as I mentioned, given the industrial experience that Saudi Arabia has, given the funding, they have as well, it could play a really big role and become very, competitive in the global landscape.
Richard Wilson (22:59.379)
And it was interesting to read in the book that this hydrogen, and Saudi Arabia is not new to hydrogen, had its first ammonia plant in 1970. And they have some experience.
Rami Shabaneh (23:08.174)
Yes, Saudi Arabia before 1970 was basically flaring all this natural gas. think SAFCO, I Saudi Arabia Fertilizer Company that was think inaugurated in 1965 and then built their first ammonia plant in 1970. And actually, that was the first, you can say industrial plant that was built in Saudi Arabia using hydrogen, you know, as the base, you know, to make the ammonia from natural gas.
And so then, you know, there was the royal decree to, you know, build out, you know, the master gas system, which is this network of pipelines, gas processing plants to capture all that flared gas and use it for value added products. And then we've seen more ammonia and methanol plants using hydrogen steel plants as well that use, you know, synthetic gas, which has hydrogen to make the steel. yeah, so that's experience builds back in the 1970s.
And of course, you have that HYSOLAR, which was a green hydrogen experiment between Saudi Arabia and the Germans, where they experimented with green hydrogen as well from solar PV.
Of course, the efficiencies of the solar and the solar to hydrogen conversion was pretty modest back then, but it still added to that R &D bank of information that they have and that they can build on.
Richard Wilson (24:40.465)
I want to come back to the R &D, but first let's extend a little bit off ammonia and get to the question that what are the challenges in transporting hydrogen? this is, talking about, know, it was interesting in, you know, the Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman has made several trips to Greece. And that's a logical point of entry for the EU in terms of all sorts of trade issues, particularly hydrogen.
What are the challenges in making a market and transporting?
Rami Shabaneh (25:13.91)
Yeah, so there's a bunch of challenges. the first one is that hydrogen in itself is a very light molecule and has a very low energy density per unit of volume. What that means is that the amount of energy you can store in a specific unit of volume is pretty low. Just because it's a gas, it wants to escape, it's very hard to contain. So, containing that gas, you need to put a lot of that in terms of energy content transport it.
And so, there's different ways you could do it. You could liquefy it like we liquefy natural gas. When you turn something into a liquid, you can occupy less space or so you can put more of it in than gas. And so, there was and so we don't have any commercial ships that can transport liquid hydrogen. We do have some pilots that there was a pilot test between Australia and Japan, but we haven't built the commercial ships, let's say to transport liquid hydrogen. So, there's an infrastructure issue there that we need to build up, but it's also costly to do so. Another way is to convert it to a carrier, like you mentioned, ammonia. Ammonia, as opposed to liquid hydrogen, can be liquid at a much higher temperature than hydrogen.
So, hydrogen you need to bring down the temperature to around minus 250 degrees Celsius to turn it into a liquid. Whereas with ammonia, you just need to bring it down to about minus 33 degrees Celsius or so. So, there's a big difference. Plus, ammonia is, you we already have the infrastructure for it. We have already ships that transport ammonia. We're doing it already. There are ports that receive ammonia. But of course, we need to also scale that up for the volumes of hydrogen coming.
Rami Shabaneh (27:11.404)
A lot of the hydrogen export oriented projects that we're seeing are planning on using ammonia as the carrier. But there's many different ways you can transport it, but it all depends on, you know, the tradeoffs are, you know, is it safe? Is it, you know, scalable and what the cost is. So whatever option you have, it all depends on the end use that you need to use the hydrogen at the end of the day. And then you have to look at the cost scale and then is it safe?
For example, with ammonia, yes, it's cheap, I mean it's cost effective to transport hydrogen via ammonia, but then you have to think about the safety aspect of it. Ammonia is very toxic, and you don't want to you know have ammonia next to urban cities, next to you know large populations. And then the second thing is that if you intend to use the hydrogen itself, then you have to back -crack that ammonia to hydrogen.
And that is an additional cost, there's a lot of losses in it. So, it really depends on what you need this hydrogen for. Do want to use ammonia directly or do you want to use pure hydrogen? All of these will determine kind of how this hydrogen will be transported.
And you mentioned about Greece, there's a good case study in our book, in the Europe chapter, where they looked at linking production hubs from Saudi Arabia through the East Mediterranean and into Greece and Italy, which are now constructing, that is the southeastern corridor for the European hydrogen backbone, which is a network of pipelines that Europe is trying to build to connect all of Europe to supply hydrogen via pipeline. And so, you could connect into that from the northwestern side of Saudi Arabia, possibly into Egypt and then north into Europe, into southern Europe. yeah, and with pipelines, mean, that's probably your cheapest method of transporting hydrogen, given of course that there's not a lot of water bodies you're crossing terrain is suitable for it. Then if it's not then you have to look at other options like shipping whether it's liquid hydrogen or ammonia or methanol. Think about cracking it back or using it directly.
Richard Wilson (29:44.602)
Let me take a quick side trip off of our framework. The HYSOLAR that you mentioned was a partnership with Germans in the 80s. I think it lasted for a decade. came out according to your book. All I hear you edited were, know, both the Germans and the Saudis came out of it with some good R &D Intel. But, the solar PV industry, and you know this well, it was not economical, the rate of technology and R &D was so great that people were making markets that it became economical. is hydrogen, is the economy, mean, aren't there still questions about electrolyzers and any number of other technological aspects of producing hydrogen economically and profitably that still need to be answered. Is that accurate?
Rami Shabaneh (30:47.866)
Yeah, exactly. the hydrogen technologies, some of them are very, very nascent or very in early stages. And there's a lot of improvement or a lot of room for improvement when it comes to efficiency and even new technologies.
So, there are some technologies that are mature that could be scaled up. So, like I said, steam methane reforming, which we use today, that's already, you know, that could be scaled up, that's ready to go. carbon capture and storage, that's scalable technology. So, we can combine those, we can start with that.
With electrolysers, there's the alkaline electrolysers, that's pretty much sure, but there's other technologies in electrolysers, for example, that could be, they're still in a very low technology readiness level, that could be improved. And not just from the production side, by the way, there's also lots to be done in the storage side, lots of research to be done in the distribution, transport, like we talked about you know, transporting hydrogen and then the end use as well.
So, there's still a lot of room for improvement. I think this is kind of the value where Saudi Arabia could also add to is that, you know, they could build a robust, you know, innovative innovation hub. And they plan to do so in NEOM as well. And where you use this hub, you know, to kind of 10 years down the line, you'll be using technologies that we don't already have, or that you can start experimenting from now and perhaps even manufacturing it here, developing it here in -house, rather than licensing other technologies from other countries and other developers.
Richard Wilson (32:31.173)
Yeah, it is fascinating. So how can Saudi Arabia have, you there's a natural interest in hydrogen. Not only are there sort of inbuilt advantages, but you also know, in terms of its long term plans, in terms of climate commitments, it's helpful there. But even more so, you know, Saudi Arabia is very intent on not being caught, given the short straw in terms of the next generation of energy resources. So obviously it's a leader in fossil fuels and that sort of thing has been as tremendous resources, but it wants to catch the next wave. And this is part of it. How does it maximize the value extraction proposition?
Rami Shabaneh (33:14.86)
Yeah, so we discussed, you know, we basically summarized the drivers for hydrogen and how to maximize the value for it. Saudi Arabia is going for hydrogen for three main reasons. The first one is that, you know, given the energy intensive sectors that Saudi Arabia have, know, hydrogen and carbon capture and storage could well be the most cost effective way to decarbonize and get them to net zero.
The second driver is that it bodes well with Vision 2030. It extends those manufacturing supply chains, creates jobs, and even allows you to create these finished goods that are low of low carbon content because you're using hydrogen to make them. And so, you're exporting a different portfolio of products. And then thirdly is that it allows Saudi Arabia, like you mentioned, to continue and remain a global energy player in a potential future trade of hydrogen. And so that is why it's very important, not just exporting the hydrogen as it is, that could be a good strategy, because a lot of countries need hydrogen to decarbonize, but also in parallel, it's also good to use this hydrogen or to find ways to use this hydrogen domestically to decarbonize.
And like I mentioned, expand those supply chains, expand manufacturing, your R &D, that you can, you know, build an ecosystem. And even, you know, we never know, attract foreign direct investment to build their steel plant or ammonia plant in Saudi Arabia. And then you can create those low carbon products.
Of course, when you see policies like the carbon border adjustment mechanism, countries trying to put a carbon tax on the border. for any product they import, depending on its carbon content, it'll get taxed by customs. And so, if you can create a very low carbon, say low carbon steel or low carbon cement using hydrogen, that can counter or make your product more attractive for those importing countries.
Richard Wilson (35:32.403)
So, Rami, let me close with the author's lament. You mentioned that the inspiration for this work came out of the G20 in 2020. Obviously, when you're gathering this many experts, there's 28 chapters in this book, and any number of experts contributed. It's a long process. it was published in April 2024, but it was closed down and you put it together sometime well in 2023.
So, in the time that you sent this off to be published, and this is what I mean by authors lament, so often something changes between now and then and then and now. Just between that short period, has anything that you have not changed and go ahead.
Rami Shabaneh (36:15.904)
Yes, in some details it has. The thing is hydrogen is such a fast moving industry right now. You everyone, you know, especially in the last two years, was almost every month someone releasing a national hydrogen strategy. And then you're like, should I include this country there? that's an important country, I think, for Saudi Arabia. And then, you know, some countries even change their strategies, or they updated their strategies and made more announcements.
So, in some cases we had to send back, if it's very important, sometimes we had to send back the draft to the author and say, hey, look, so -and -so is doing this. I think this will add a lot of value to the chapter and future proof it as well. Because things had been very dynamic, and I think we were catching the wave as it was rising. And so, it was a lot of back and forth. But the authors were very helpful, and we also assisted them by looking at the news and tracking everything and helping them, look at this, this is good. And then we had our partner, KAUST, who was looking at technology development. They helped us a lot in the technology sections and helped us understand as well, you know, from a technical perspective, at a technical level, how these technologies will be important. Of course, those are changing as well.
And so yeah, it was a lot of back and forth. think that was one of the biggest challenges of the book is that this is a fast paced industry. I mean, it's kept us researching and kind of being up to date with things.
Richard Wilson (37:57.513)
Rami Shabaneh, Senior Fellow in the Oil and Gas Program, King Abdullah Petroleum Studies and Research Center, KAPSARC, thanks so much. This was tremendously informative for me, and I think our listeners.
Rami Shabaneh (38:11.424)
I hope so, yeah, thanks for inviting me, Richard. It was fun.