MA-FIA II: The e-Fuels Lobby — How F1 Became Saudi Arabia’s Trojan Horse
35 barrels a day of “sustainable” fuel. 9 million barrels a day of crude oil. And a PR machine lobbying the European Parliament so you can’t buy a petrol car in 2035… while they keep pumping oil until the end of time.
In the first MA-FIA instalment we laid out the full case file: manipulated results, secret deals, gutted ethics committees, destroyed grids. If you haven’t read it, start there. This is the follow-up.
Today we go deep on a single operation: how Saudi Aramco has used Formula 1 as a front to lobby the European Commission, promote synthetic fuels that won’t save anything, and ensure the combustion engine keeps generating demand for their product — their oil — for decades to come.
This is not opinion. These are documents obtained through freedom-of-information laws by SourceMaterial, a non-profit investigative journalism unit. Verified meetings. Published letters. Names on the record. Let’s go.
First Things First: The Combustion Engine Is Not the Enemy
If you read NEC, you already know where this house stands. The internal combustion engine is one of the greatest inventions in human history. It has powered the world for over a century and made motorsport possible. We’re not going to apologise for defending it.
The problem isn’t petrol. The problem isn’t Aramco. The problem is using the excuse of “sustainable fuels” to conduct political lobbying that benefits an oil company, while telling you it’s for the environment. It’s hypocrisy turned into a business model. And F1 is the delivery vehicle.
Let’s be clear: this article doesn’t defend forced electrification or climb on the green bandwagon. It defends you not being taken for a fool.
The Operation: Step by Step
The Contract — 2020
In March 2020, F1 announced a long-term sponsorship deal with Saudi Aramco. The world’s largest oil company. 9 million barrels of crude per day. Responsible for over 4% of all planetary CO₂ emissions since 1965 — more than 59 billion tonnes, per data compiled by The Guardian. More than the entire United Kingdom in the same period.
Reported value: $40-45 million per year, plus $65 million for each race featuring a Saudi Arabian Grand Prix, launched in 2021.
But the contract wasn’t just money for visibility. The official press release stated that F1 and Aramco would combine “their considerable shared expertise” to identify opportunities for “the advancement of sustainable fuels, enhanced engine efficiencies and emerging mobility technology.”
Read that again. The sponsorship contract included a clause for the joint promotion of sustainable fuels. Not a side effect. A condition.
The Letters — 2022-2023
Documents obtained by SourceMaterial through freedom-of-information requests lay out the operation in detail.
In September 2022, Formula One Management (F1’s commercial entity, owned by Liberty Media, headquartered in London) wrote to the office of Frans Timmermans, then European Commission executive vice-president and climate action commissioner. The letter opposed the EU’s plan to ban the sale of new combustion-engine cars from 2035, calling it “a huge one-way bet on a relatively new technology.”
F1 argued that e-fuels — synthetic fuels produced using green hydrogen and captured CO₂ — were “a more impactful short-term solution” and had “the potential to be a more effective technology in the fight against climate change” than electric vehicles.
Following the letter, F1 held meetings with Timmermans’s aides and with Paolo Gentiloni, the EU commissioner whose brief includes the European Green Deal, fuel taxation, and sustainable development goals.
F1 also met three MEPs from the European Parliament’s environment committee to discuss “CO₂ emissions standards for small vehicles.” Among them was Andreas Glück of Germany’s FDP (Free Democratic Party), with whom F1 co-hosted an event inside the European Parliament promoting an e-fuels report authored by an academic who sits on the e-Fuel Alliance, a pro-synthetic-fuels lobby group.
The Detail That Changes Everything
Here’s the fact that turns this from ordinary corporate lobbying into something else entirely.
F1 was not affected by the legislation it was lobbying against. The 2035 ban on new combustion-engine car sales does not apply to racing cars. F1 is exempt. The EU itself confirmed this.
So why was a racing company lobbying against legislation that didn’t touch it?
Belén Balanyá, researcher at the Corporate Europe Observatory, explained to SourceMaterial: “In meetings with MEPs, Saudi Aramco sounds like a bad oil and gas company owned by a repressive regime. In contrast, Formula 1 has a lot of fans, people like it. If you remove Saudi Aramco and put Formula 1, you are removing from sight who is actually benefiting from this lobbying.”
Aramco is not registered as a lobbyist in the EU. F1 is. Per the EU Transparency Register, F1 declared lobbying expenditure of €50,000-99,999 in 2021. And it hired the same PR agency as Aramco — Boldt — to manage its contacts with EU lawmakers.
F1 denies lobbying on Aramco’s behalf. Spokesman Liam Parker told SourceMaterial the suggestions were “completely wrong” and that they simply believe they have “a solution that could help to reduce current and future road car fleets emissions.” Glück’s spokesman said it would be “clearly wrong” to suggest the MEP had been influenced by F1.
You decide who you believe.
The Result
Did it work? Judge for yourself.
In March 2023, under pressure from Germany’s FDP — whose MEP Glück had co-hosted the event with F1 in the European Parliament — EU ministers struck a backroom deal to allow sales of combustion-engine cars after 2035 if they run on synthetic fuels.
According to a study cited by Transport & Environment, this exemption could cut electric car sales by up to 46 million units and trigger the burning of 135 billion additional litres of petrol.
And in December 2025, the European Commission officially softened its stance: the new “automotive package” allows combustion-engine cars to continue being sold after 2035 if they use sustainable fuels or biofuels, effectively killing the absolute ban.
Saudi Arabia has invested over $6 billion in sport since 2021. Think it’s for the love of the game?
e-Fuels: The Science Nobody Tells You
Here’s the part Aramco’s marketing department doesn’t enjoy.
e-Fuels are produced through electrolysis (splitting water into hydrogen and oxygen using renewable electricity), then combining that hydrogen with CO₂ captured from the atmosphere to synthesise a liquid fuel compatible with combustion engines.
In theory, if all the electricity is renewable and the CO₂ is captured from air, the cycle is carbon-neutral. In theory.
In practice, according to the International Council on Clean Transportation (ICCT), the total efficiency of the e-fuels pathway is 16%. For every 100 units of renewable energy you feed into the process, only 16 reach the wheels of a car. 48% is lost converting electricity to liquid fuel, and another 70% is lost when that fuel is burned in a combustion engine. You throw away 84% of the energy you generate. That’s not a revolution. That’s a sinkhole.
Cost? e-Fuels can hit $55 per gallon at current production rates. The most optimistic projections suggest dropping to around $4 per gallon by 2050. For context: conventional petrol costs $3-4 per gallon today. So in the best-case scenario, 25 years from now, e-fuels will be as expensive as what we already have. And that’s the plan to save the planet?
Scale? Aramco’s e-fuel demonstration plant has a capacity of 35 barrels per day. Aramco produces 9 million barrels of crude per day. e-Fuels represent 0.0004% of its output. The other 99.9996% is still oil. If this were a food company, it’d be like putting a lettuce in the window of a burger chain and calling yourself a vegan restaurant.
e-Fuels are not an energy solution. They’re a public relations product. A mirage of sustainability designed to justify keeping the combustion engine legal in Europe — and to guarantee Aramco a market for its crude for decades to come.
And here’s the worst part: regular petrol works perfectly fine. If the real goal were keeping the combustion engine alive, you wouldn’t need to invent a fuel that costs 14 times more and wastes 84% of the energy. You’d just be straight about it: oil runs the world and it’s going to keep running it. But that doesn’t look great on a “sustainability” banner and it doesn’t justify regulations that gut the spectacle.
Yet in the paid ads in the Financial Times, in Drive to Survive campaigns, and on the Aston Martin Aramco F1 Team livery, what you see is “sustainable fuels,” “innovation,” “clean future.”
Formal Advertising Complaints
In February 2024, the New Weather Institute and Fossil Free Football (UK) and Reclame Fossielvrij (Netherlands) filed formal complaints with advertising regulators in both countries against Saudi Aramco, accusing it of making “misleading environmental claims” in its F1-associated campaigns.
The complaints state that Aramco uses “confusing terminology” to promote its “advanced” and “low-carbon” fuels, and omits key information about its massive fossil fuel production. The campaigns were disseminated through social media and sponsored content in the Financial Times.
The FT was also named as co-defendant for its role in creating and distributing sponsored content for Aramco.
The Geopolitical Game Nobody Mentions
Jim Krane, fellow for energy studies at Rice University’s Baker Institute in Texas, puts it plainly: the e-fuels lobby “goes far beyond shaping the vehicle market in decades to come. It goes to the very heart of the Saudi monarchy’s survival.”
Aramco is 98.5% owned by the Saudi state. It is the government’s primary revenue source, generating around $250 million per day. Between 2016 and 2023, Aramco represented 27-40% of Saudi Arabia’s entire GDP.
The internal combustion engine and the jet turbine are the technologies that keep the Saudi monarchy in power. Every new combustion-engine car sold is a guaranteed customer for their product for 15-20 years. Every legislative exemption allowing combustion cars past 2035 is a strategic victory for Riyadh.
And F1 — with an estimated 1.56 billion fans worldwide, a Netflix series with nearly 7 million viewers, and direct access to EU legislators — is the perfect vehicle for that operation.
This isn’t sports sponsorship. This is geopolitical influence channelled through a sport that you and I love.
The Final Question
We’re not going to tell you what car to buy or which fuel is “the right one.” That’s not our job and that’s not the point.
The point is this: F1 and the FIA fill their mouths with sustainability and green futures while cashing cheques from the world’s biggest oil company. They use that green narrative to impose regulations that gut the spectacle — engines that don’t roar, races that don’t thrill, refuelling that vanished. And meanwhile, they lobby in Brussels offices to ensure Aramco keeps selling oil in Europe for decades.
If e-fuels were truly the revolution they claim, Aramco wouldn’t need F1 to do its lobbying. If sustainability were truly the priority, F1 wouldn’t have as its headline sponsor the company pumping 9 million barrels a day. And if the FIA actually governed the sport instead of serving corporate interests, we wouldn’t be writing this series.
35 barrels a day of e-fuel. 9 million of crude. And a “sustainable” sticker on the door.
That’s the MA-FIA.
Key sources: SourceMaterial — “Trojan Horsepower: Formula 1 and the Saudi oil lobby” (FOI-based investigation, December 2023). Tortoise Media — “F1 lobbies for Saudi against EU green rules” (December 2023). Euronews Green — advertising complaints against Aramco (February 2024). Heatmap News — F1-Aramco EU lobbying analysis (December 2023). DeSmog — “Greenwashing Through Sport” (February 2024). ICCT — “E-fuels won’t save the internal combustion engine” (November 2021). Transport & Environment — lifecycle analysis and legislative impact. CNBC — Stefano Domenicali statements (November 2024). EU Transparency Register — F1 lobbying spend. Fossil Free Football — Aramco-FIFA factsheet (November 2025).
Check you’re still alive.
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