Is Saudi Aramco cooling on crude oil?
HAS SAUDI ARABIA stopped believing in a bright future for petroleum? That is the question that in recent weeks has hung over Saudi Aramco. The desert kingdom’s national oil goliath has a central position in the world’s oil markets. Its market value of $2trn, five times that of the second-biggest oil firm, ExxonMobil, and its rich valuation relative to profits are predicated in large part on its bountiful reserves of crude and its peerless ability to tap them cheaply and, as oil goes, cleanly (see chart 1). So Saudi Arabia’s energy ministry stunned many industry-watchers in January by suspending the firm’s long-trumpeted and costly plans for expanding oil-production capacity from 12m to 13m barrels per day (b/d). Was it proof that even the kingpin of oil had finally accepted that oil demand would soon peak and then begin to decline?
To get a hint of Aramco’s answer, all eyes turned to its financial results for 2023, reported on March 10th. No one expected a repeat of the year before, when high oil prices and surging demand propelled Aramco’s annual net profit to $161bn, the highest ever for any listed firm anywhere. But analysts and investors were still keenly interested in the extent of the decline in the company’s revenue and profit, in any changes to its capital-spending plans and, possibly, in the unveiling of an all-new strategy.
In the event, profits did fall sharply, from $161bn in 2022 to $121bn last year, though that was still the second-best performance in the company’s history. Thanks to a recently introduced special dividend, Aramco paid nearly $100bn to shareholders last year, 30% more than amid the bonanza of 2022. It also promised to hand over even more in 2024.
2024-03-11 12:28:29
Original from www.economist.com
