Elon Musk’s Vast Oil Conspiracy Ends With Saudi Billions
The Tesla CEO spent years warning of sabotage by oil interests. But nobody is more crude than his newest mega investor.
Elon Musk has always hated the fossil-fuel industry. His stated mission for Tesla Inc. is to hasten its demise, and more than once he’s blamed the “unrelenting and enormous” power of oil interests for sabotaging his efforts. But now, in his bid to take Tesla private, Musk is courting billions of oil dollars.
After a week of playing coy about who he’s been trying to enlist to help buy out Tesla’s publicly traded shares, Musk revealed at least one potential partner: Saudi Arabia. It’s hard to think of a more perfect symbol of Big Oil and its money than a sovereign wealth fund created by the world’s biggest oil exporter. Musk said in a blog post on Monday that he’s been in talks with Saudi Arabia “going back almost two years.”