In Abqaiq, the biggest oil processing facility on the planet, there is no sense the world may be coming to the end of the oil era.
The complex, about 25 miles from the coastline of the Persian Gulf, is the size of about 350 football pitches. In one of three control rooms, a dozen Saudi Aramco staff sit behind computer screens monitoring a system that can process as much as 7mn barrels of oil per day, representing one in every 14 barrels sold worldwide.
The crude is depressurised in silver, dome-shaped “spheroids” and then piped into 18 stabiliser columns, where impurities like dissolved gases and hydrogen sulphide are removed, before it is sent for refining.
As the case against use of fossil fuels hardens, several of the biggest western oil companies have in the past five years reconsidered their commitment to the crude oil that has been the bedrock of the global economy for over a hundred years. Aramco is doing the opposite: it is doubling down.
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