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On October 6th, 2021, Saudi Arabia’s oil company Aramco reached a $2 trillion valuation as it hit near-record levels during trading hours.
The demand for energy is picking up, despite the ongoing coronavirus pandemic’s continued toll on travel and other key gas-guzzling sectors.
Its market capitalization value put Aramco just behind Microsoft and Apple as the world’s most valuable companies.
Aramco is owned by the government of Saudi Arabia with just under 2% of the company publicly listed on the Saudi Tadawul stock exchange.
Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin SALMAN was the architect behind the effort to publicly list a sliver of Aramco in late 2019, touting it as a way to raise capital for the Kingdom’s sovereign wealth fund to then develop new cities and mega-projects across the country that create needed private sector jobs for young Saudis.
Despite fluctuations in Aramco’s yearly earnings, the company has stuck to its promise to pay an annual dividend of $75bn until 2024 to shareholders, the biggest of which is the government.
Aramco produces the Kingdom’s vast oil and gas products, and receives directives on supply production each month from the Energy Ministry of Saudi Arabia, OPEC’s linchpin nation.
This week the oil carter and other allied major oil producers are maintaining a gradual approach to restore production levels that had been slashed during the pandemic, agreeing to add only 400.000 barrels per day in November.
Aramco had a net income of approximately $47bn in the first half of 2021, double of what it earned during the same period last year when the coronavirus grounded travel and pummeled global demand for oil.
There’s reason to believe that Aramco could continue climbing. Bank of America Corp. analysts have said the global energy crunch could help propel oil prices above $100 a barrel for the first time since 2014.
This article was edited using the data from Business-standard.com, English.alarabiya.net Aljazeera.com, Bloomberg.com and In1.me
