Saudi Arabia has announced “Aramco to go Public”. Only, 1-2% of the Aramco wealth will be offered to the public at Saudi Stock Exchange, Tadawul in Riyadh. It plans to raise $20-40 billion, the biggest ever in the world.
Saudi Aramco did first successful drilling in 1938 at Dhahran and its headquarters was in New York, USA. The nationalisation happened in 1973 during the time of King Faisal after Arab-Israel ‘Yom Kippur’ war. The oil priced rose from 18pence/barrel to $1.2/barrel in ten days. After 50 years, the Arabs used oil as a weapon and capital after the fall of Ottoman Empire in 1918.
Saudi Arabia is not an ordinary oil country. It has 22% known oil reserves of the world and produces 10% of oil in the world. Oil is flowing beneath the rolling dunes of Empty Quarter (Rub-al-Khali) and the seabed of the Gulf besides the Eastern province. In all Aramco has 500 oil reservoirs with 260 millions barrels of proved reserves. Aramco is worth about $ 1.5-2 trillion.
About 90% of Aramco’s employees at Dhahran are Saudi. Oil accounts for 70% of government’s revenue and almost 80% of exports.
A good news at the time of trade-war between US and China!
