【商业周刊 20150413】沙特阿拉伯让石油“择日而亡”

满仓

【中文标题】沙特阿拉伯让石油“择日而亡”
【原文标题】Saudi Arabia’s Plan to Extend the Age of Oil
【登载媒体】商业周刊
【原文作者】Peter Waldman
【原文链接】http://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2015-04-12/saudi-arabia-s-plan-to-extend-the-age-of-oil


最大的石油出口国任由油价下跌——让世界在担忧环境、效能和替代燃料等因素下更迟地摆脱对原油的依赖。



去年秋天，石油价格暴跌，沙特阿拉伯的石油部长、全世界的能源沙皇阿里•阿尔•纳伊米一言不发。他依然和平常一样出席三大洲的石油产业会议，但是从9月中旬到11月中旬，当基准原油价格下跌了21个百分点，达到4年来最低点时，他没有在公众面前说过一句话。

《商业周刊》在2015年5月期的杂志中报道，过去20年里，全世界价值2万亿美元的石油市场精心分析过纳伊米所说的每一个音节，以探寻供给和价格的走向迹象。在前两次的油价遭受重挫时——分别是1998年的亚洲金融危机和10年后的全球金融危机——纳伊米组织欧佩克成员国采取一致的减产行动，让油价逆市而升。而这次，他几乎是隐形了。

11月27日在维也纳举行的卡特尔半年会议上，纳伊米枪毙了12个成员国中大多数人支持的减产方案，他倾向于采取一个颇为大胆的策略：任由原油价格下跌，等待着最低价格把高成本的能源替代品供应商挤出市场。第二天，石油价格下跌了10个百分点，而且趋势不减。全球石油价格的风向标布伦特原油，从2011年到2014年中保持在110美元每桶的价格，到1月份已经降到50美元以下。

石油产业著名的历史学家丹尼尔•尤金在2月份接受《商业周刊》采访时说：“他们的行为是具有历史意义的。他们说：‘我们放手，我们退出，我们不再干预市场，让市场自己去管理市场。’你得到的就是这种令人震惊的反应，油价于是就下跌到现在这个水平。”

79岁的纳伊米在11月份的会议上只手遮天，据参加闭门会议的官员介绍，他对欧佩克成员国说，他们应当保持稳定的产出，以保护市场份额免受美国页岩油的侵袭。这种石油的提炼成本更高，因此当石油价格下降，它的竞争性就会明显下降。12月，他在接受媒体采访时也有类似的表态，说让沙特阿拉伯这种低成本供应商减产来平衡市场价格是“畸形逻辑”。

但是，供给问题仅仅一半原因。尽管沙特的新姿态被普遍认为是对页岩油宣战，但纳伊米那只“看得见的手”拉低油价的目的还隐含着沙特更深层次的恐惧：未来对石油的疲软需求。

多年来，纳伊米和沙特领导人在担心，气候变化和过高的原油价格将会促进提升能源效率、鼓励可再生能源的开发，加速向天然气等可替代能源的转化，尤其是在那些期望迅猛发展的新兴市场中。他们看到了，对于给这个王国带来巨大财富——并且在沙漠下依然有丰富蕴藏——的商品的需求已经接近极限。这不是石油部长会在公开场合公开谈论的话题，因为全球都在关注碳排放和摆脱对化石能源依赖的问题。但是纳伊米了解这个现实，三年前，他在卡塔尔接受采访时说：“需求会比供给更早达到顶峰。”如果石油消费的曲线很快变得平坦，转化的市场必将让沙特阿拉伯陷入万劫不复之地，这个国家将近一半的国民生产总值来自石油出口。

上周，纳伊米在利雅德的一次讲话中说，沙特阿拉伯将会“坚定地”与反对任何企图边缘化石油消耗的人站在一起。“有的人试图达成某些国际协定，限制使用化石燃料，长远看来，这将会损害石油出口国的利益。”

维基解密所透露的一条有关美国国务院的信息显示，沙特意图延长世界对石油的依赖，早在十年前就开始了。根据2006年的一封使馆间通讯，纳伊米在与同事和美国外交官的谈话中，用沙特需要“安全的需求”来回应美国人的“安全供给”美国驻利雅德大使詹姆斯•史密斯在2010年写给美国能源部长朱棣文一份备忘录中说：“沙特官员非常担心，气候变化协议将会大幅削减他们的收入。实际上，‘石油顶峰’观点已经被‘需求顶峰’所取代了。”



坦率地说，沙特人从未担心过石油顶峰。这个概念是说，全球原油供给在经历了一个半世纪的上升曲线之后，将会停止增长，并且逐渐无法满足需求。一些地质学家和环境保护人士在这个世纪初用这个观点引起了政策层面的争论。2005年，石油分析家马修•西蒙斯的一本书预测，沙特石油产出量的下降预示全球石油供给将会不可逆转地下滑。纳伊米对这种观点不屑一顾，承诺将提供更高的产量。他赢得了这个赌局。相比于十年前，沙特石油产量的确在提升。沙特的油田具备艺术级的科技含量，至少两个位于沙漠中的油田配备美食家级别的餐厅。美国石油产业也有显著的提升，从6年前的日产600万桶，到2014年的900万桶。沙特人担心的顶峰是需求顶峰。

在1998年到2013年之间担任沙特石油部高级经济顾问的穆罕默德•阿尔萨班说，去年油价暴跌之前，沙特官员期望全球的石油需求在2025年达到一个平衡值。他们任由油价下跌可以为自己争取更多的时间。据美林银行商品分析人士所提供的信息，在每桶60到70美元的价位上，需求顶峰至少向后推迟了5年。对于那些再生能源公司，以及任何希望降低需求曲线的上升趋势——自从19世纪60年代在宾夕法尼亚州出现了第一笔商业存款之后，让这个星球彻底改变模样的石油消耗量就在毫不留情地上升——的人来说，这种推迟是一个坏消息。

每桶100美元以上的原油价格会让需求顶峰就在眼前。萨班还是沙特阿拉伯的首席国际气候谈判代表，他说：“过去4年里，石油出口商在能源市场份额上普遍遭遇了惨败。新兴经济体的能源使用效率越来越高，并且具有多样化的能源需求。这严重影响了石油的消耗量。”

花旗集团商品分析机构负责任艾德•莫尔斯说，在去年夏天，沙特官员已经接近“精神失常”的状态了。因为他们发现中国对石油的需求增长竟然那么快就达到了顶峰，部分原因是居高不下的价格。莫尔斯曾经担任过国际能源政策副主任，现在依然与海湾阿拉伯国家的官员保持密切的联系。他说：“纳伊米发现中国疯狂的固定资产投资时代已经结束，也就是说快速的城市化进程，以及用不可思议的能源密集方式做事情的时代已经结束了。”



低成本替代能源的出现也是其中一个因素。中国的柴油需求，在连续十年保持平均8％的增长之后，2013年到2014年实际上是在下降。国际能源署认为部分原因是这个国家迅速增长的天然气汽车数量。中国今年对石油的需求预计会上升到平均每天1060万桶，比去年增长2.6％，相当于过去十年平均增长比例的一半，2004年增长比例的六分之一。中国的石油使用增长幅度依然是全球平均水平的一倍，但是国际能源署在去年把2019年中国需求预测的数量减少了50万桶。越来越多的高效能汽车和工厂降低了中国经济对石油的整体依赖度，按照平均一点GDP所需要的耗油量来计算，从2008年到2014年降低了18％。莫尔斯说：“如果我坐在纳伊米的位置上，我也会采取和他一样的行动。”

纳伊米在过去5年里不止一次后朋友提到他想要退休，但他目前面临着一些风险，主要来自于大规模的市场重新整合。他拒绝让沙特阿拉伯和欧佩克成员国再一次扮演调节产量的角色，也不愿削减供给来平衡市场，这给那些已经身陷危机、急需价格反弹的成员国雪上加霜。在委内瑞拉，经济举步维艰，外汇储备已经接近于零，油价下跌让政府的预算缺口进一步扩大，加深了当地的经济危机。伊朗，急需油价上升来帮助抵消国际社会制裁对出口的影响，他们对沙特领导的这项政策不止一次恶语相向。一位副外交部长1月份在政府电视台说，波斯湾的产油国也试图阻止油价下跌。由于缺少共识，外交部长穆罕默德•贾瓦德•扎里夫把与沙特外交部长的会议延期。三月底，当地的紧张关系愈加明显。沙特阿拉伯领导多国部队对也门胡塞武装进行空袭，试图遏制伊朗在当地的影响。


低油价对出口收入的影响让委内瑞拉面临严峻的经济危机。加拉加斯居民民在商店门口排起长队购买日常用品。

即使持有7000亿美元石油储备的沙特阿拉伯，如果油价在未来几年持续低靡，也将面临财政危机。这个拥有3000万人口的国度，在国内项目和国外援助上一掷千金。当国王萨勒曼在1月份国王阿卜杜拉去世后继位依赖，他的第一公众讲话就承诺要改善教育和医疗服务。尽管油价在2014年大部分时候依然坚挺，但沙特在当年的预算出现赤字。政府预测2015年的预算缺口将达到1450亿里亚尔（390亿美元），如果油价不反弹，这个缺口还会更大。

尽管如此，纳伊米在11月会议之后多次表示，他不知道油价还会跌到什么程度，也不知道何时会反弹，沙特人愿意拭目以待。纳伊米对沙特阿拉伯的担心主要是着眼于未来。

在2013年华盛顿的一次研讨会上，这位石油部长说：“我们最终的目标是降低我们对石油收益的过分依赖。”而这个过程的核心环节是在吉达北部的红海，成立阿卜杜拉国王科技大学。在担任石油部长之前，纳伊米是国有石油企业阿拉伯美国石油公司的CEO，他讲述了2006年在一次内阁会议上，国王拉着他的手，问他是否可以建立一所大学。“我说：‘陛下，我们——我是说阿拉伯美国石油公司——修建了很多炼油厂、加油站、运输管道和房屋，但是大学？还没有。但是我们可以做到，只要您有要求。’于是我们就做到了。”


11月份在维也纳举行的欧佩克会议上，纳伊米拒绝签署一个石油减产的协议书，这是以往欧佩克用来提升价格的常见手段。

纳伊米所设想的这所学校的使命，就是引导沙特阿拉伯走上后碳氢化合物时代。学校的校园可以容纳220名教授和2000名研究生，在一个被认为既没有包容性也没有宗教自由的国家，为自由和包容建立一个不受侵袭的堡垒。学校由陆地和海上的重兵防守，不戴面纱的女学生与男学生可以肩并肩地学习，免受在沙特街道上巡逻的宗教警察的侵扰。那里的研究主要针对科学和商业方面的突破，利用沙特阿拉伯取之不尽用之不竭的资源——阳光、沙砾、海水。当提到退休生活时，纳伊米说他会为这所学校投入更多的时间。

这所大学当然是沙特阿拉伯产业多样化的重要举措，但近期还有其它一些新兴项目。这个国家已经开始探索蕴藏丰富的磷酸盐，用来制作废料出口，还在开采铝土矿，用来提炼金属铝。纳伊米说，最终沙特阿拉伯希望可以生产出成品，比如汽车零部件。纳伊米在华盛顿的研讨会上说：“我们为年轻人提供多样化的就业机会，鼓励企业发展，为创新提供良好的环境。这并不简单，不是一夜之间就会出现的变化，但是改变正在发生。”

在石油时代彻底结束之前，沙特阿拉伯究竟有多长时间作准备呢？这或许部分取决于替代能源在低油价时代的发展状况如何。风力涡轮和太阳能板的销量会保持强劲吗？还是会像经济危机期间那样，在资金链断裂后直线下落？电动汽车的销量在汽油价格下跌的背景下还会继续攀升吗？

美国能源信息署主管亚当•赛门斯基在1月底华盛顿一次论坛中说，更低的原油价格不会延缓风力和太阳能发电的研发步伐，因为石油与发电没有直接的竞争关系。他说，电动汽车有税收优惠和政策的扶持，或许还能打上绿色科技的烙印。

比尔•麦克纪本是一位作家和环保活动人士，他曾经领导针对拱心石XL石油管道的抗议活动，这条管道将把加拿大沥青砂中提炼出的石油输送到美国市场。他说：“沙特人或许想再一次试图延长石油的寿命，但似乎可再生能源成本的稳定下降，让这次不同以往了。”

纳伊米就像一个中央银行的行长或者高层外交人士那样小心翼翼地发表他的公开言论，他并没有说世界离石油需求顶峰究竟有多远，也没有回应接受采访的要求。但是他认为，不考虑到其它替代能源的因素，就无法完全理解原油市场。《中东经济调查》在12月份发表的一份采访记录中提到，纳伊米说：“人必须要现实，能源市场中很多因素——不仅仅是石油——都会决定未来的价格。全世界都在做一些努力，做研究、提升能源效率、使用非化石燃料。”



阿里•本•易卜拉欣•纳伊米在二战后的生活就是与石油打交道的历史，他给这个产业带来了太多的变化。他在1935年出生于沙特阿拉伯石油蕴藏丰富的东部省份，童年时期过着游牧的生活，与一大家人和牲畜从一条河流迁移到另一条河流。纳伊米8岁的时候，他的贝因都母亲把他送到省会城市达曼与父亲一起居住。他进入一所由阿拉伯美国石油公司开办的一所学校，这个公司名叫Aramco。这家石油公司是由加利福尼亚州标准石油公司在30年代建立的，70年代收归国有之后改名为沙特Aramco。

12岁的时候，纳伊米接替了他突然去世的哥哥的工作，成为Aramco的一名报童。一天，在Aramco的办公室里，美国大老板在走廊上问纳伊米，他对未来生活的期望是什么。纳伊米在理海大学的密友彼得•范德坎普讲述了纳伊米在60年代和同学们分享过的故事，纳伊米说：“先生，有一天我想做你这样的工作。”美国人说：“如果是这样，你需要接受一些教育。”

Aramco把纳伊米送到贝鲁特的学校上学，然后又送他到宾夕法尼亚州的理海大学，然后是加利福尼亚州的斯坦福大学，他在那里获得了地质学的学士学位。在理海大学，地质系教授请6英尺5英寸高的范德坎普照看5英尺高的纳伊米。范德坎普说，这个来自很多人叫不出名字的中东国家的转学生，是个好伙伴，他尊重基督教和犹太人、与女人和谐相处。放假期间，他很愿意在范德坎普位于新泽西的家中做一些杂事，包括砍柴禾。纳伊米对自己的贝因都人身份感到自豪，他经常讲述在食物和水源极度缺乏的沙漠中，照看部族羊群的事情。1962年，他的研究项目是新泽西海滩商业开采的潜力。现在是俄勒冈州地质学家的范德坎普说：“阿里是个有前途的人，我们可以猜到。”

纳伊米回到沙特阿拉伯之后，在Aramco中平步青云，1984年被任命为这家公司的第一任沙特总裁，4年后，又成为CEO。当时，美国和欧洲的石油消耗量持续下降，部分原因是疲软的经济增长和原油价格在70年代震荡后出现的环境保护主义倾向。作为回应，石油部长艾哈迈德•扎基•亚马尼把沙特的石油产量从1981年每天1000万桶，削减到1986年的每天350万桶。价格依然在下跌，短时期曾触及10美元一桶的底限，因为非欧佩克成员来在偷偷地向市场供应大量的石油，以填补收入缺口。1986年法赫德国王解雇了亚马尼，沙特廉价的石油涌入市场，美国人开始养成了挥霍能源的习惯。（大型越野车的年代还仅仅是一个开始。）

Aramco的新总裁亲眼看到了沙特削减产量，而其它人不跟进所造成的结果，这是他至今引以为戒的事情。3月份，他在柏林说：“我们不会再犯同样的错误。”



1995年被提升为石油部长之后，纳伊米周一到周五在利雅德工作，周末与家人在别墅或者在特兰附近的一个小农场里度过。他每天早早来到能源部，那是一幢九层、砖石解构的房子，有黑色的玻璃。他位于7层的办公室算不上豪华，20年来装饰几乎没有改变。每天下午两点是沙特政府部门的下班时间，他乘坐一辆黑色的梅赛德斯奔驰汽车离开，回到家继续工作。

纳伊米的任期开始时困难重重。随着中国需求的上升，他在1997年11月说服欧佩克扩大产量，恰逢亚洲金融危机，在接下来的两年里，油价下跌了50％。

他还错误地应对了沙特阿拉伯邀请西方能源公司帮助开发本国天然气储备的项目。1998年，当时还是王子的阿卜杜拉试图吸引外国公司来开发沙特的天然气资源，用来发展类似发电、海水淡化和石油化学产品生产等工业项目。萨达德•侯赛尼在1985年到2003年之前负责Aramco的勘探和开采工作，据他说，是纳伊米把最好的天然气资源留给Aramco，让埃克森美孚和其它几十家公司到另外的地区去开发，一些沙特地质学家怀疑那里是否真的有可以做商业用途的天然气资源。

记者史蒂夫•科尔在《私有帝国：埃克森美孚与美国权力》一书中提到，与埃克森美孚的谈判于2003年在沙特外交部长萨乌德•费萨尔位于加利福尼亚州比佛利山庄的家中破裂。时任埃克森美孚CEO的李•雷蒙德高速费萨尔和纳伊米，说沙特提供的地区没有足够的天然气资源来确保投资可以得到回报。纳伊米说，埃克森美孚的专家故意贬低那些地区的资源价值，以此来争取更好的条件。科尔写到，当时雷蒙德勃然大怒，说纳伊米竟然敢质疑自己人的忠诚度，谈判因此破裂。雷蒙德在接受采访时说：“我非常不高兴，事实就是，那些地方没有足够的资源让你认为值得为这个项目做投入。”

随着时间的推移，纳伊米为自己赢得了直言不讳的谈判家和国际市场精明管理者的称号。尽管沙特在2003年警告乔治•W•布什总统不要入侵伊拉克，纳伊米在战争期间依然确保石油的增产来稳定市场。2008年，石油价格飙升到147美元一桶，他不顾美国强大的要求增产的压力。他在若干次与美国官员火药味十足的会议中，敏锐地判断出市场情况已经与5年前大不相同，他认为石油供给是充足的，导致价格飙升的因素是金融投机商。从2007年到2009年任美国驻利雅德大使、中东政策委员会主任福特•弗兰克尔说：“这个信息非常明确，但是美国政府不愿理会。”


由于国际制裁，伊朗的石油出口量较小，原油价格的降低对经济产生了更严重的影响。

2011年5月利比亚暴乱期间，美国官员飞到沙特阿拉伯，请纳伊米帮助弥补利比亚损失的石油产量。纳伊米在6月份的会议上请欧佩克成员国最大程度提升产量，但是各国能源部长纷纷利息，没有达成一致一件。以伊朗为首的反对派不想承诺更高的产量，因为他们已经没有更高的生产能力。他们认为，只有那些最富有的石油国家才可以提供更多的原油，包括沙特阿拉伯、卡塔尔、科威特和阿联酋。

之后，纳伊米召集媒体发泄怒气。他坐在酒店包间中豪华的躺椅上，说他从未见过这么不讲道理的顽固分子。他试图说服其他人，对欧佩克原油的需求早已超越了经济衰退高峰期的水平，那个标准是在2008年设立的。但是他们就是不听。

在经历过艰苦的商谈之后，欧佩克在下一次会议中提升了产量。油价在阿拉伯春天起始时创下新高，之后在2011年一路走低。

2009年到2014年任美国能源部副部长的丹尼尔•庞曼说：“他这个人说话不多，但没有废话，他能搞定一些事情。”

去年11月在维也纳的欧佩克部长会议上，纳伊米是难以琢磨的研究对象。一天早晨，他从环城大道酒店的后门偷偷溜出来，没想到被一群记者跟踪。人们知道纳伊米清晨的散步是他分享信息的好时机，但是那一天他没有说话。不久他回到欧佩克总部，实在无法忍受电视台记者穷追不舍的问题，纳伊米不再沉着、冷静，他喊道：“滚开！”

在闭门会议中，欧佩克部长按字母顺序在一张巨大的长方形桌子前落座。一头银发的纳伊米穿着深色西服套装、蓝紫色领带和同样颜色的胸口袋手帕，他坐在海外阿拉伯国家卡塔尔和阿联酋之间。根据会议纪要显示，委内瑞拉的拉菲尔•拉米雷斯做开场白，倡议欧佩克成员国、俄罗斯和墨西哥联合减产。


弗拉基米尔•普京的心腹伊戈尔•谢钦（左）是国有石油企业俄罗斯石油公司的总裁，他看到卢布几乎是与油价在同比贬值。

纳伊米对此嗤之以鼻。他告诉部长们，在这个产业中60年的经验让他不会相信俄罗斯人。2008年金融危机期间，俄罗斯承诺与欧佩克同步减产，但是并没有兑现。仅仅两天前在维也纳，纳伊米出席了一个令人尴尬的会议。弗拉基米尔•普京的心腹、石油巨头俄罗斯石油公司CEO伊戈尔•谢钦说，俄罗斯同意减产，却被同时出席会议的俄罗斯能源部长亚历山大•诺瓦克否决了。

接下拉，纳伊米又枪毙了一项阿尔及利亚人的提议。这项提议有7个成员国赞成，内容是欧佩克减产5％。纳伊米说，这或许会提升今天的价格，但无法解决页岩石油和需求下降给欧佩克带来的长期问题。不出意料，他的理论又占了上风。

对需求的焦虑长久地萦绕在沙特人的心里，在美国总统巴拉克•奥巴马就职之后，这种焦虑愈加明显。首先，纳伊米在2009年对美国外交人员说，他并不担心替代能源会削减石油的消耗量，因为国际市场还在继续扩大，尤其是中国和印度。但是6个月之后，史密斯大使在2010年发给能源部长朱的备忘录中说，沙特领导人“没有想到政府向后碳氢化合物经济前进并摆脱对石油的依赖态度这么坚决。”

大使在报告中说，警报已经响起，沙特人刚刚斥资1000亿美元，把日产量提升到每天1250万桶。史密斯写到：“沙特领导人担心市场是否还需要这些石油。他们不大关心未来价格的走向，而是关心我们改变全球能源结构的规模和进展。”

维基解密中另外一些机密文件说，沙特人在应对环境变化问题时是“阻挠分子”和“精神分裂者”——在本土实施太阳能和碳固化项目，却阻碍国际的多边会谈。2009年哥本哈根联合国气候变化大会之后，史密斯写到：“这种矛盾的情绪或许部分原因在于，沙特政府还没有搞清楚环境变化协议所带来的各层面的影响。”

尽管哥本哈根并没有形成任何捆绑性的协议，但各国政府纷纷设定了碳排放限额，并逐渐开始实施环境有关的条例。效能改进依然在持续，沙特政府或许已经搞明白了各方面的影响。

纳伊米推迟了自己的退休计划，因为阿卜杜拉国王要求他继续履职。在1月23日阿卜杜拉去世之后，萨勒曼国王继续让纳伊米担任石油部长的职务，表示沙特在转型期会奉行以往的政策。尽管如此，纳伊米可能很快就会花费更多的时间来管理他的大学，实现他对这个国家未来工业和技术转型的目标。作为一名Aramco的管理者，以及周游世界的石油外交家，纳伊米展示了卓越的才能，弥合西方与沙特王国传统领导人之间的分歧。在他一手策划下，沙特的工业在朝着科学化方向进步。

2010年，纳伊米带领朱来到沙漠绿洲Rawdhat Khuraim中的王宫会见阿卜杜拉国王。史密斯也一同前往，他说，年老的君王依然思路清晰，他利用这个机会向诺贝尔物理学奖获得者提出了一些问题。

国王问到：“给我讲讲宇宙是怎么形成的。”朱耐心地解释了大爆炸理论。国王问：“这对上帝意味着什么？”朱和史密斯商量了一下如何给出一个恰当、符合外交礼仪的回答。朱说：“有些事情我们知道，对于其它的事情，我们有上帝。”

阿卜杜拉国王问到：“告诉我石油是怎么来的。”当朱讲述有机物在几百万年里如何逐渐分解时，纳伊米凑在史密斯的耳朵边说：“我已经给他解释过几百遍了。”




原文：

The biggest exporter has let prices plummet—delaying the day when climate concerns, efficiency, and fuel switching break the world’s dependence on crude.

Last fall, as oil prices crashed, Ali al-Naimi, Saudi Arabia’s petroleum minister and the world’s de facto energy czar, went mum. He still popped up, as is his habit, at industry conferences on three continents. Yet from mid-September to the middle of November, while benchmark crude prices plunged 21 percent to a four-year low, Naimi didn’t utter a word in public.

For 20 years, Bloomberg Markets reports in its May 2015 issue, the world’s $2 trillion oil market has parsed Naimi’s every syllable for signs of where supply and prices are heading. Twice during previous routs—amid the Asian financial crisis in 1998 and again when the global economy melted down 10 years later—Naimi reversed oil’s free fall by orchestrating production cutbacks among members of OPEC. This time, he went to ground.

At the cartel’s semiannual meeting on Nov. 27 in Vienna, Naimi shot down proposed output reductions supported by a majority of the 12 members in favor of a more daring strategy: keep pumping and wait for lower prices to force high-cost suppliers out of the market. Oil prices fell a further 10 percent by the end of the next day and kept going. Having averaged $110 a barrel from 2011 through the middle of 2014, Brent crude, the global benchmark, dipped below $50 in January.

“What they did was historic,” Daniel Yergin, the pre-eminent historian of the oil industry, told Bloomberg in February. “They said: ‘We resign. We quit. We’re no longer going to be the manager of the market. Let the market manage the market.’ That’s when you got this sort of shocked reaction that took prices down to those levels we saw.”

Naimi, 79, dominated the debate at the November meeting, according to officials briefed on the closed-door proceedings. He told his OPEC counterparts they should maintain output to protect market share from rising supplies of U.S. shale oil, which costs more to get out of the ground and thus becomes less viable as prices fall. In December, he said much the same thing in a press interview, arguing that it was “crooked logic” for low-cost producers such as Saudi Arabia to pump less to balance the market.

Supply was only half the calculus, though. While the new Saudi stance was being trumpeted as a war on shale, Naimi’s not-so-invisible hand pushing prices lower also addressed an even deeper Saudi fear: flagging long-term demand.

Naimi and other Saudi leaders have worried for years that climate change and high crude prices will boost energy efficiency, encourage renewables, and accelerate a switch to alternative fuels such as natural gas, especially in the emerging markets that they count on for growth. They see how demand for the commodity that’s created the kingdom’s enormous wealth—and is still abundant beneath the desert sands—may be nearing its peak. This isn’t something the petroleum minister discusses in depth in public, given global concern about carbon emissions and efforts to reduce reliance on fossil fuels. But Naimi acknowledges the trend. “Demand will peak way ahead of supply,” he told reporters in Qatar three years ago. If growth in oil consumption flattens out too soon, the transition could be wrenching for Saudi Arabia, which gets almost half its gross domestic product from oil exports.

Last week, in a speech in Riyadh, Naimi said Saudi Arabia would stand “firmly and resolutely” with others who oppose any attempt to marginalize oil consumption. “There are those who are trying to reach international agreements to limit the use of fossil fuel, and that will damage the interests of oil producers in the long-term,” he said.  

U.S. State Department cables released by WikiLeaks show that the Saudis’ interest in prolonging the world’s dependence on oil dates back at least a decade. In conversations with colleagues and U.S. diplomats, Naimi responded to the American fixation on “security of supply” with the Saudi need for “security of demand,” according to a 2006 embassy dispatch. “Saudi officials are very concerned that a climate change treaty would significantly reduce their income,” James Smith, the U.S. ambassador to Riyadh, wrote in a 2010 memo to U.S. Energy Secretary Steven Chu. “Effectively, peak oil arguments have been replaced by peak demand.”

The Saudis, to be sure, never thought much of peak oil. That’s the theory that global crude supplies, on an upward trajectory for a century and a half, were about to stop rising and could no longer keep up with demand. A faction of geologists and environmentalists made this argument part of the policy debate in the early years of this century. In 2005, when a book by oil analyst Matthew Simmons predicted a drop-off in Saudi output would signal that global supplies were beginning an irreversible decline, Naimi belittled the claims and promised higher production capacity. He won the argument. The Saudis pump more today than a decade ago. Saudi oil fields boast state-of-the-art technology, and at least two of them, in the middle of the desert, have gourmet restaurants. U.S. output has had a stunning rise as well, to more than 9 million barrels a day at the end of 2014 from less than 6 million five years ago. The peak that has the Saudis more worried is peak demand.

Before oil prices tanked last year, Saudi officials were bracing for global demand to level off as soon as 2025, says Mohammed al-Sabban, a senior economic adviser to the Saudi petroleum minister from 1988 to 2013. By letting prices fall, they may have bought themselves some time. At $60 to $70 a barrel, peak demand gets pushed back at least five more years, according to Bank of America Merrill Lynch commodities researchers. Such a delay would be bad news for renewable energy companies and for anyone hoping to bend the demand curve lower—slowing or stopping the relentless rise of global oil consumption that has transformed the planet since the first commercial deposit was developed in Pennsylvania in the early 1860s.

Crude prices above $100 a barrel had been bringing a demand peak closer. “The past four years were a disaster for oil producers in terms of energy market share,” says Sabban, who was also Saudi Arabia’s chief international climate negotiator. “Emerging economies are getting more efficient and diversifying their energy sources. That has definitely impacted oil consumption.”

Saudi officials were in a state of “near panic” last summer, when they recognized how quickly demand growth in China was leveling off, in part because of persistently high crude prices, says Ed Morse, Citigroup’s head of commodities research. “Naimi saw the era of frantic fixed-asset investments in China was over,” says Morse, a former deputy assistant secretary of state for international energy policy, who still communicates regularly with Gulf Arab officials. “That translates to the end of rapid urbanization, the end of doing things in unbelievably energy-intensive ways.”

Substitution of lower-cost fuels is also taking a toll. Chinese diesel demand, after rising an average of 8 percent a year for a decade, actually fell in 2013 and 2014. The International Energy Agency attributes this partly to the country’s rapidly expanding fleet of natural gas vehicles. Chinese demand for oil this year is expected to rise to 10.6 million barrels a day, an increase of 2.6 percent, or half the average annual growth of the past decade and one-sixth the rate in 2004. China’s oil use is still climbing twice as fast as global consumption, but the IEA has in the past year shaved 500,000 barrels from its 2019 China demand forecast. More efficient autos and factories reduced the overall oil intensity of China’s economy—oil burned per unit of GDP—by 18 percent from 2008 to 2014. “If I were in Naimi’s shoes, I’d do exactly what he’s doing,” Morse says.

Naimi, who for the past five years has been telling friends he’s ready to retire, faces big risks as he sees through one more dramatic market realignment. His refusal to put Saudi Arabia and OPEC once again in the swing producer role, cutting supply to balance the market, hurts economically troubled member states that most need a price rebound. In Venezuela, where the economy is teetering and foreign-exchange reserves are depleted, oil’s collapse blows a bigger hole in the government budget and deepens the crisis. Iran, which needs high prices to help offset the effect of sanctions that have choked off its exports, has had harsh words for the Saudi-led policy. Persian Gulf producers should try to halt the decline in prices, a deputy foreign minister said on state-run television in January, and Foreign Minister Mohammad Javad Zarif delayed a meeting with his Saudi counterpart due to the discord. Regional tensions were highlighted in late March, when Saudi Arabia led airstrikes against Yemen’s Houthi rebels, seeking to counter Iranian influence there.

Venezuela faces a deepening economic crisis as low oil prices strangle export revenue. Caracas residents line up outside a store for scarce groceries.

Even Saudi Arabia, with more than $700 billion in reserves, could suffer financial strain if oil prices stay low for several years. The kingdom, with a population of about 30 million, spends lavishly on domestic programs and foreign aid. When King Salman ascended to the throne in January, after the death of King Abdullah, he promised in his first speech to improve education and expand health care. The Saudi budget was in deficit in 2014, despite strong oil prices for most of the year. The government forecasts a 2015 budget gap of 145 billion riyals ($39 billion), and it will be wider if oil prices don’t rebound.

Still, Naimi has said several times since the November meeting that he doesn’t know how low prices might go or when they will recover—and that the Saudis are willing to wait and see. Naimi’s concerns for Saudi Arabia are further in the future.

“Our ultimate aim is to diversify away from our overreliance on oil revenues,” the petroleum minister said at a 2013 seminar in Washington. The centerpiece of that effort is the establishment of the King Abdullah University of Science and Technology on the Red Sea, north of Jeddah. Naimi, who was CEO of state oil producer Saudi Aramco before becoming petroleum minister, recounted how, at a council of ministers meeting in 2006, the monarch took his hand and asked if he could build a university. “I said: ‘Your Majesty, we have  built—I mean, Saudi Aramco has built—a lot of refineries, gas plants, pipelines, some housing. But universities? No. But we can, if you want.’ And we did.”

At OPEC’s November meeting in Vienna, Ali al-Naimi refused to sign on to a proposed reduction in output meant to boost prices as the cartel has done in the past.

The school’s mission, as Naimi articulates it, is nothing less than to lead Saudi Arabia into the post-hydrocarbon age. The campus, built for 220 professors and 2,000 graduate students, is a bastion of tolerance and religious liberty in a country often criticized for having neither. Heavily armed guards on land and at sea protect the facility, where unveiled women study and work side by side with men, undisturbed by the religious police who patrol Saudi cities. Research there is aimed at scientific and commercial breakthroughs using those things Saudi Arabia has in abundance, such as sun, sand, and saltwater. When he discusses retirement, Naimi says it’s to devote more time to the institution.

While the university is key to Saudi Arabia’s diversification effort, there are other initiatives for the nearer term. The kingdom already is exploiting its huge deposits of phosphates to export fertilizer and is mining bauxite to smelt and roll aluminum. Eventually, Naimi says, Saudi Arabia wants to manufacture finished goods such as car parts. “We are generating job opportunities for our young people, encouraging enterprise, and providing the right environment for innovation and progress,” Naimi said at the Washington seminar. “It’s not easy, and it will not happen overnight. But it is happening.”

How much time Saudi Arabia has to prepare for the eventual decline of the oil era may depend, in part, on how alternatives fare during this period of cheap oil. Will sales of wind turbines and solar panels stay strong? Or will they enter a tailspin like they did during the Great Recession, when project financing dried up? And will sales of electric vehicles continue to climb even as gasoline prices slump?

Adam Sieminski, head of the U.S. Energy Information Administration, said at a Washington forum in late January that lower crude prices wouldn’t slow development of wind and solar power because there’s little direct competition with oil in electricity generation. Electric vehicles, he said, are helped by tax incentives and government policies and perhaps also by the cachet of green technology.

‘Our ultimate aim is to diversify away from our overreliance on oil revenues,’ Naimi said in 2013. ‘It will not happen overnight. But it is happening.’

“The Saudis may be once again trying to prolong the age of oil,” says Bill McKibben, the author and environmental activist who has helped lead the campaign to block the Keystone XL pipeline, which would bring oil from Canada’s tar sands to the U.S. market. “But it feels like the steady, relentless fall in costs for renewables may make this different from other cycles.”

Naimi, who carefully manages his public comments the way a central banker or top diplomat might, hasn’t said how close he thinks the world may be to a peak in oil demand. He didn’t respond to requests to be interviewed for this story. But he has articulated his view that the crude market can no longer be understood without considering the effects alternative energy sources are having. “One has to be realistic,” Naimi told the Middle East Economic Survey in an interview published in December. “There are many things in the energy market—not the oil market—that will determine prices in the future. A lot of effort is being exerted worldwide, whether in research or boosting efficiency or using nonfossil fuels.”

Ali bin Ibrahim al-Naimi has lived the post-World War II history of oil—and done much to shape it. Born in 1935 in Saudi Arabia’s oil-rich Eastern Province, he spent his early childhood as a desert nomad, moving from spring to spring with his extended family and their livestock. When Naimi was 8, his Bedouin mother sent him to live with his father in the provincial capital of Dammam. He attended a school operated by Arabian American Oil Co., known as Aramco. The petroleum producer was founded by Standard Oil of California in the 1930s and became Saudi Aramco after its nationalization in the 1970s.

At 12, Naimi became a mail boy at Aramco, taking over for his brother after his sudden death, and he quickly shined as a star typist. One day at the Aramco offices, the American CEO stopped Naimi in the hallway and asked the teenager what he wanted to do with his life, says Peter van de Kamp, who became friends with Naimi at Lehigh University, recounting a story Naimi told their classmates in the early 1960s. “Well, sir, someday I would like to have your job,” Naimi answered. “If that’s the case,” the American said, “you’ll need an education.”

Aramco sent Naimi to school in Beirut and then to Lehigh in Pennsylvania and Stanford University in California, where he earned a master’s degree in geology. At Lehigh, the chair of the geology department assigned the 6-foot-5-inch Van de Kamp to watch out for Naimi, who’s around 5 feet tall. The transfer student from a Mideast country few students had heard of was a good companion, Van de Kamp says, respectful of Christians and Jews, comfortable socializing with women. He was eager to chop firewood and “get his hands dirty” doing chores at the Van de Kamps’ New Jersey home on holidays, he says. Proud of his Bedouin roots, Naimi told stories about tending sheep and goats in a forbidding desert with scarce food or water. He did his senior research project in 1962 on the commercial mining potential of New Jersey’s beach sand. “Ali was a comer ; we all could see it,” says Van de Kamp, who’s now a geologist in Oregon.

After returning to Saudi Arabia, Naimi zoomed through a series of oil production and executive positions at Aramco, culminating in his 1984 appointment as the company’s first Saudi president and, four years later, its CEO. At the time, U.S. and European consumption was in decline, due in part to sluggish economic growth and conservation measures adopted after the oil shocks of the 1970s. In response, Petroleum Minister Ahmed Zaki Yamani slashed Saudi oil output from 10 million barrels a day in 1981 to just 3.5 million in 1986. Prices kept falling, briefly getting to around $10 a barrel, as non-OPEC producers and cartel members cheating on their quotas filled the gap. In 1986, King Fahd fired Yamani, and the Saudis flooded the world with cheap oil to seize back market share—and induce Americans to resume their gas-guzzling habits. (The era of big SUVs was just beginning.)

Aramco’s new president saw firsthand what happened when the Saudis cut output and others didn’t, a lesson he cites today. “We will not make the same mistake again,” he said in Berlin in March.

Promoted to petroleum minister in 1995, Naimi spends weekdays working in Riyadh and weekends at his family’s villa or at a small farm near Dharan. He arrives early each day at the ministry, a set of nine-story stone and black-glass blocks. His seventh-floor offices aren’t grand, the decor little changed in 20 years. He leaves in a black Mercedes by 2 p.m., Saudi government quitting time, and works the rest of the day at home.

Naimi’s tenure got off to a rough start. With demand rising in China, he persuaded OPEC to expand production in November 1997, just as the Asian financial crisis was deepening. During the next two years, oil prices fell 50 percent.

He also mishandled Saudi Arabia’s overture to Western energy companies to help develop the kingdom’s natural gas reserves. By 1998, then-Crown Prince Abdullah was trying to lure back foreign firms to tap Saudi gas for industrial projects such as electricity generation, water desalinization, and petrochemical manufacturing. Naimi, however, kept the best gas fields for Aramco while offering Exxon Mobil and dozens of other companies blocks that some Saudi geologists doubted contained much commercial gas, according to Sadad al-Husseini, who led Aramco’s exploration and production operations from 1985 to 2003.

The Exxon Mobil negotiations blew up in 2003, at the home of Saudi Foreign Minister Saud al-Faisal in Beverly Hills, California, according to journalist Steve Coll’s book Private Empire: ExxonMobil and American Power, published in 2012. Exxon Mobil’s then-CEO Lee Raymond informed Faisal and Naimi that the Saudi field on offer didn’t have enough gas to warrant his investment, Coll wrote. Naimi responded that Exxon Mobil’s experts were playing down the block’s potential to get a better deal. At that point, Raymond exploded at Naimi for questioning his people’s integrity, and the deal soon fell apart, Coll wrote. “I was very unhappy,” Raymond says in an interview. “The reality was that there was never access to the potential reserves you would need to support the project.”

Over time, Naimi earned a reputation as a straight talker and a shrewd manager of the global market. Despite the Saudis’ dire warnings to President George W. Bush not to invade Iraq in 2003, Naimi kept markets stable by promising to pump more oil during the war. In 2008, as prices soared to a record $147 a barrel, he resisted intense U.S. pressure to raise output again. Judging shrewdly that market conditions were very different than they were five years earlier, he argued in several contentious meetings with American officials that supply was adequate and that financial speculators were driving up prices. “The line was clear and consistent, even if it wasn’t a message the American administration wanted to hear,” says Ford Fraker, the U.S. ambassador to Riyadh from 2007 to 2009 and president of the Middle East Policy Council.

Iran has been exporting less because of international sanctions, making the decline in the price of crude an even worse blow to its economy.

During the Libyan uprising in May 2011, U.S. officials flew into Saudi Arabia to seek Naimi’s help replacing lost Libyan production. Naimi asked OPEC to expand its output ceiling at the cartel’s meeting that June, but the ministers stormed out of the Vienna secretariat without an agreement. The rebel members, led by Iran, didn’t want to agree to a higher target because they had little excess capacity that could be brought on line. They objected that the only countries with spare oil to sell were the cartel’s richest—Saudi Arabia, Qatar, Kuwait, and the United Arab Emirates.

Afterward, Naimi summoned the press to vent. He’d never seen such unreasonable obstinacy, said the minister, seated in a plush chair in his hotel suite. He’d tried to persuade the others that demand for OPEC’s crude had long since surpassed the recession levels that prevailed when the target was last set in 2008. They wouldn’t listen.

After some dogged diplomacy, OPEC raised the quota at its next meeting. Oil prices spiked early in the Arab Spring, and then they declined through the rest of 2011.

“He’s a man of few words but none wasted,” says Daniel Poneman, the U.S. deputy secretary of energy from 2009 to 2014. “He really came through.”

Naimi was a study in inscrutability when the OPEC ministers gathered this past November in Vienna. That morning, he slipped out the back door of his hotel on the city’s Ringstrasse, trailed by a gaggle of reporters through the medieval backstreets. This brisk morning walk had become known as a moment when Naimi would share his thoughts, but he wasn’t talking. A little later, back at OPEC headquarters, impatient with a television crew’s badgering questions, Naimi lost his legendary cool. “Get the hell out,” he snapped.

Inside the closed-door session, the OPEC ministers sat in alphabetical order around a large rectangular table. Naimi, silver-haired and dressed in a dark suit, blue-purple tie, and matching breast-pocket handkerchief, was seated between Gulf Arab allies Qatar and the U.A.E. Across the table, Venezuela’s Rafael Ramirez opened the proceedings with a proposal for a production cut to be jointly implemented by OPEC, Russia, and Mexico, according to the officials briefed on the proceedings.

Russia, where Vladimir Putin confidant Igor Sechin, left, is chairman of state-controlled oil company Rosneft, saw the ruble decline almost in unison with the price of crude.

Naimi scoffed. He told the ministers that after 60 years in the industry, he knew from experience that Russia wasn’t reliable. In 2008, the Russians pledged to join OPEC’s supply cut during the financial crash, but they never did. And just two days earlier in Vienna, Naimi had attended an awkward meeting at which Vladimir Putin ally Igor Sechin, CEO of oil giant Rosneft, said Russia would agree to cuts, only to be overruled at the same meeting by Russian Energy Minister Alexander Novak.

Naimi next shot down an Algerian proposal, supported by seven member states, for a 5 percent output reduction levied only on OPEC producers. That might boost prices today, Naimi said, but wouldn’t solve OPEC’s longer-term problem with shale producers and declining demand growth. His reasoning prevailed, as usual.

Demand anxiety, always lurking in the Saudi psyche, had surged after U.S. President Barack Obama took office. At first, in 2009, Naimi told American diplomats he wasn’t worried that alternative energy sources would reduce oil use because global consumption was soaring, especially in China and India, according to U.S. diplomatic cables. But six months later, in Ambassador Smith’s 2010 memo to Energy Secretary Chu, the envoy said Saudi leaders “were caught off guard by the strength of the Administration’s initial statements about its desire to move to a post-hydrocarbon economy and end dependence on imported oil.”

Alarm was heightened, the ambassador reported, because the Saudis were just finishing a $100 billion expansion of their production capacity to 12.5 million barrels a day. “Saudi leaders are concerned that this oil may never be needed,” Smith wrote. “They are less concerned about price forecasts than our expectations of the scope and pace of changes globally.”

Other classified cables released by WikiLeaks described the Saudis as “obstructionist” and “schizophrenic” on curbing climate change—launching solar and carbon-sequestration projects at home while impeding multilateral talks abroad. “Part of the explanation for this schizophrenic position is that the Saudi Government has not yet thought through all the implications of a climate change agreement, in part because it may not fully understand the various demand scenarios,” Smith wrote after the 2009 U.N. climate change conference in Copenhagen.

‘The Saudis may be trying to prolong the age of oil,’ Bill McKibben say. ‘The fall in costs for renewables may make this different from other cycles.’

While Copenhagen didn’t lead to any binding agreement, governments have tightened carbon emission limits and other environmental rules in the years since. Efficiency improvements have kept coming. And the Saudi government has been thinking through the implications.

Naimi had put off retirement because King Abdullah asked him to stay. After Abdullah’s death on Jan. 23, King Salman kept Naimi as petroleum minister to signal consistency in Saudi policy during the transition. Still, Naimi is likely to soon have more time to devote to his university and the industrial and technological transformation he envisions for his country. As an Aramco executive and then as a globe-trotting oil diplomat, Naimi has shown great talent for bridging the divide between Westerners and the kingdom’s traditional leaders. And he’s overseen a Saudi industry that is an engine of science and progress.

In 2010, Naimi escorted Chu to visit King Abdullah at his palace in the desert oasis of Rawdhat Khuraim. The elderly monarch was in a philosophical mood and took the opportunity to pose a few questions to the Nobel laureate physicist, says Smith, who went along for the visit.

“Tell me how the universe was formed,” the king asked, in Smith’s recounting. Chu patiently laid out the story of the Big Bang theory. “What does that mean for God?” the monarch said. Chu and Smith conferred for a moment on an appropriate, diplomatic response. “There are some things we know, and for other things, we have God,” Chu replied.

“And tell me, how did we get all this oil?” King Abdullah asked. As Chu described how organisms decomposed over millions of years, Naimi whispered in Smith’s ear, “I’ve told him this a hundred times.”