Why Is The World's Largest Oil Company Making A Hybrid Engine That Consumes Less Fuel?

Hybrid engines have since long been considered as the stepping stones to efficient electric motor engines. Never before though, has such an engine been advocated by an oil company. Saudi Aramco is set to change that.

The Saudi Arabian multinational petroleum and natural gas company is pursuing a new hybrid electric-petrol engine that will aim to reduce the emission of greenhouse gases by 50 percent. For this, the scientists at Saudi Aramco are working with those at King Abdullah University of Science and Technology as well as their counterparts in China.

The effort was recently unveiled in a paper published in the journal ¡®Applied Energy¡¯. The goal of the hybrid engine production as mentioned in the paper is ¡°an orderly transition toward a more sustainable transport future.¡± In this case, it would mean using advanced gasoline compression-ignition (GCI), along with varying battery sizes and cleaner types of petrol like that refined from Saudi crude.

The mobility industry has since long anticipated the inevitable transition to electric vehicles the world over. Oil companies were long blamed for delaying this transition to safeguard their income sources through reliability on fossil fuels for transportation.

Saudi Aramco logo (Representative Image: Reuters)

With companies like Saudi Aramco investing in technologies for a cleaner mobility and more importantly, those that cut away on the use of fossil fuels is a significant deviation from the earlier stance. As per a report by Arab News, Saudi Aramco has been pursuing fuel efficiency as part of its sustainability strategy, ¡°with centres studying the issue of pollutant emissions in Paris, Detroit and Shanghai.¡±

The Aramco team also mentions the cautions that the industry must take before embarking on the EV transition.

One is the limited availability of the raw materials used to produce larger batteries in pursuit of a larger range. Hence, the company wants to build hybrid engines, relying less on those heavy earth metals like Lithium and Cobalt, that are available only in select locations.

The other concern is directed towards the source of electricity to power these EVs. As some of the nations still rely on non-renewable sources for most of their electricity generation, EVs might not turn out to be as clean as they claim to be in such regions. That, however, is being changed as countries gradually move towards renewable sources of energy for their power demands.