Subsidies for fossil fuel companies have nearly doubled in the Middle East and North Africa region since 2020, according to the International Monetary Fund.
Some of the world's largest oil and gas companies are in the energy-rich region, such as Saudi Arabia's Aramco and the Abu Dhabi National Oil Company in the United Arab Emirates.
In a report released Thursday, the fund said that fossil fuel companies globally benefited from $13 million in subsidies per minute last year, despite being the main cause of the climate crisis. That's $7 trillion for the whole of 2022. The IMF said that fuel price reform and reforming fossil fuel subsidies would dramatically cut down deaths from air pollution and climate change.
The report found that "explicit subsidies" — undercharging for supply costs — have more than doubled since the last IMF assessment in 2020, when they amounted to $500 billion. In 2022 they stood at $1.3 billion.
