Daniel Yergin

The best thing about, you know, the energy business, if you're a curious person, it's global in some ways.

It's the worst thing because it involves so much travel and so much jet lag.

But I certainly, you know, will spend time there.

And of course, for me, it's a constant process of learning, you know, because you have to sort of show up to get the perspectives and understand what's in people's minds.

I think the country that has done the best, it was not a big player then, is the United Arab Emirates, Abu Dhabi.

They built probably a sovereign wealth fund that's worth a trillion dollars, diversified their economy.

A couple of years I looked at it, more than half their GDP was no longer oil.

And that's what Saudi Arabia is trying to do today to diversify their economies.

and make them not just dependent upon the price of oil because you don't know where technology is, where the markets are gonna be.

So, you know, the Shah of Iran used to say, who fell from power in 1979, he used to say that, you know, he wanted to save the oil for his grandchildren.

Now, grandchildren are in charge in many of those countries.

Not his grandchildren.

His grandchildren are somewhere else.

That's right.

But on the Arab side of the Gulf, and they're focused both on continuing that revenue stream, but needing oil in order to diversify their economies away from oil.

Yeah.

I mean, that's interesting.

Like Russia is still, you know, at the end of the day, heavily dependent upon oil and gas.

And, you know, it distorts their economy.

That's a very good question.