[adventured]

That oil will still be worth trillions for the next two decades. It won't be worthless until the global economy has moved very substantially off of oil. It won't even plunge toward worthless until demand begins to dramatically fall off, which isn't going to occur in the next two or three years.

The Saudis will likely have time to liquidate a very large portion of Aramco and its oil assets before the market for oil dries up too much. In 20 years they can exhaust over half of their oil reserves (by some estimates, they'll be a net oil importer by 2030-2035). They'll sell well over ten trillion dollars worth of oil in that time.

It will take decades to shift the global economy and industry off of oil. In ten years, the majority of cars on the road globally will still be burning gasoline. That hopefully won't be the case in 20 though.

[dgemm]

It won't be worthless but it will be worth less.

[ThrustVectoring]

Burning gasoline isn't the problem, burning gasoline that's sourced from the ground is. It's possible to use a lot of electricity to run gasoline combustion backwards, turning CO2 and H20 into gasoline. It's currently not economical due to electricity prices, but it may be a better option to retrofit gasoline production rather than automobile fuel consumption.

[Gibbon1]

> (by some estimates, they'll be a net oil importer by 2030-2035).

That's kind of a 'funny' observation. Saudi Arabia can't ever be an oil importer since the only thing they have to exchange for oil is oil.

[tw04]

I'm fairly certain the rest of the world would be happy to exchange cash for oil or oil for cash.

[Gibbon1]

Saudi Arabia doesn't have any real way to earn cash except by selling oil. There is the whole Mecca thing, but that's it.

[tw04]

I'm not sure what part of this you're not getting. They're selling off a small stake of the state-owned oil company to diversify how they make money. They'll use the remaining money + new income from the corporations they'll build/buy to import oil. This isn't a hard concept to follow.