Saudis and Oil Consumption

Usually when I tell somebody that in Saudi Arabia (as in the other GCC countries, too, for that matter) most of the electricity is generated simply by burning oil, people tend to be really surprised. I mean, for many people living e.g. in Europe or in the United States this sounds like a simply ridiculous idea. Oil is considered to be so expensive and rapidly disappearing global resource that all attempts should be made to limit its consumption.

Then consider this: Arabian Business published an article in May stating that this year in March alone Saudis burned 377,000 barrels of oil per day to keep their power stations and water-treatment plants^(* running. The peak daily rate during the summer months is easily double. For comparison, e.g. in Denmark the whole daily oil consumption has been on average 140,900 barrels in the recent years, including also consumption of traffic and so forth.

^*) Surely many of you know that e.g. most of the drinking water in Saudi Arabia is produced by desalination, a very energy consuming process.