Study of the Saudi Aramco Value Chain

Study of the Saudi Aramco Value Chain October 2010
Company overview: The Saudi Arabian Oil Company (Saudi Aramco) is a government-owned entity (since 1988 fully government-owned) and the world’s largest oil company in terms of output and managed natural crude oil resources. The company specializes in the exploration, production and distribution of crude oil, petrochemicals and natural gas. Saudi Aramco was established 1933 when Saudi Arabia signed a concession agreement with Standard Oil of California to explore for oil in the country. The group has more than 55,000 employees, circa 500 of which are Canadians. The company is headquartered in Dhahran. Plants are established in Abqiq (near Jeddah), …show more content…

Table 3: Principal products manufactured at in-Kingdom refineries (in barrels); Source: Saudi Aramco Annual Review 2009

The oil operations of Saudi Aramco in Saudi Arabia, including the territorial waters in the Arabian Gulf and the Red Sea, encompass an area of more than 1.5 million square kilometers, a territory larger 2

Study of the Saudi Aramco Value Chain than the combined areas of Texas, California, Oklahoma and Utah. Most production comes from the coastal plains fields in the Eastern Province, spanning 300 km North and South of Dhahran.

In Petroleum Intelligence Weekly’s December 2009 ranking Saudi Aramco was again ranked as the largest oil company in the world, for the 21st consecutive year.

Table 4: Petroleum Intelligence Weekly ranking of largest oil companies, December 2009

The output of petrochemical products of the Rabigh Refining and Petrochemical Company (Petro Rabigh facility), Saudi Aramco’s first venture into the petrochemicals business is shown in the table below:

Table 5: Output of the petrochemical plant Petro Rabigh Phase I; Source: Saudi Aramco Annual Review 2009

Saudi Arabia discovered the merits of gas as a valuable resource in the 1970s, well before any other hydrocarbon-rich country in the Middle East. The Kingdom’s Master Gas System (MGS) was launched in the 1980s to capture and utilize, rather than flare, this important energy resource. Natural gas is the fastest growing energy source worldwide with