A floating industrial city, a new illusion promoted by Mohammed bin Salman

The Bloomberg Agency considered that Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman’s plan to build a floating industrial city without carbon emissions on the Red Sea is just a new illusion he is promoting to cover up his fiasco.

The agency said that the new project raises controversy and doubts about its feasibility because it did not mention how much the city will cost or how it will be designed to float? Also, the city of NEOM itself suffers from a severe delay in completion.

Saudi officials said the crown prince plans to build a “floating” carbon-neutral industrial city on the Red Sea as part of his mega project NEOM.

NEOM did not say how much the city would cost or how the complex would be designed to float.

The company that develops NEOM said in a press statement that the project called Oxagon would include a port and a logistics centre. According to the official Saudi Press Agency, it will be a “comprehensive knowledge city” focused on robotics and artificial intelligence.

Announced in 2017, NEOM is the crown jewel of Prince Mohammed bin Salman’s program to reform the economy of the world’s largest oil exporter.

His plan to transform the remote region on the Kingdom’s northwestern Red Sea coast into a robot-driven technology hub encapsulates the key elements of his so-called Vision 2030 to diversify away from crude oil, ease social restrictions and boost investment.

However, the project has sparked controversy, including doubts about its viability, after some previous efforts to build free economic and financial zones struggled to take off.

The resettlement of the local population turned into violence and arrests.

When MBS announced NEOM, it was originally framed as a $500 billion investment. Foreign companies have been slow to comply, but some have signed deals, including Oracle Corp, Air Products and Huawei Digital Energy.

Last January, NEOM laid out detailed plans to build a 170 km linear city without cars, called The Line as its hub, but this project’s complexity means it may take years to get off the ground.

It is widely seen that the escalation of Mohammed bin Salman’s bogus projects is only limited to improving his tainted personal reputation and attracting attention to him to cover up his record of crimes and human rights violations.

It appears that Mohammed bin Salman has an enormous surplus of ideas about how to spend the Kingdom’s money. After his Saudi 2030 initiative, which includes the construction of the future city NEOM at the cost of $500 billion, he came up with a new initiative called “The Green Middle East”, which requires an amount of $700 billion to be invested in it.

Like the project to build the future city, Green Middle East also obtained a website where the objectives and the way to implement them were detailed.

Among other things, bin Salman plans to reduce greenhouse gas emissions until the year 2060, to plant 10 billion trees, 10 million of which have been planted, to stop the expansion of the desert by expanding green areas with an area of ​​541 square kilometers, and to establish electricity stations working on alternative energy, Which will provide green electricity to about 600,000 families, build 9,900 km of railways to reduce congestion in the streets, expand nature reserves by thousands of square kilometers, and employ about 10,000 workers in the Special Authority for Environmental Conservation.

The enormity of the projects is impressive, and if there is no dramatic turn, the prince (36 years old) will be king at the age of 75 at the end of these projects. He is relatively young compared to his father and the kings who preceded him.

The most important question is: will the Kingdom be able until then to pay the huge sums, 1.5 trillion dollars, to complete this dream? Because it is required in the meantime to face financial difficulties, including a national debt of 230 billion dollars and a budget deficit of 5 per cent of the gross domestic product. These are not dramatic debts or deficits, significantly after oil prices rose in the last quarter of this year, which helped the Kingdom reduce its deficit by 38 per cent.

But there is a difference between the establishment of the Future City, which aims to recruit investors and import foreign companies to the state, and between huge investments in natural reserves and the establishment of education and training centers to preserve the environment and the planting of billions of trees, which do not directly contribute to the economy.

What has the Crown Prince found to announce the holding of a summit conference in the Kingdom, in which heads of state, directors of international companies, representatives of financial institutions and experts from around the world will participate? The public motive is the international trend to stop global warming, reduce greenhouse gas emissions, and develop alternative sources of energy.

But this is not a new trend; He got a boost of encouragement from US President Joe Biden, who has turned the preservation of the planet into an important chapter in the legacy he wants to succeed.

Bin Salman may dream of a green and prosperous Saudi Arabia and perhaps compose a poem in classic Arabic about clean air free of pollutants. However, it seems that what is more important to him is repairing his relationship with the American president, who still refuses to talk to him over the murder of journalist Jamal Khashoggi.

Thus, if the quality of the environment, the treatment of air pollution, and the emission of toxic gases are the hobby of the American president, then bin Salman must play in the same stadium and excel in it.