The world’s biggest oil company is also, by some measures, the most profitable company of any kind, perhaps in history. Last year it raked in $104.7 billion in profits, or nearly $287 million a day. Sure, the U.S. pumps more barrels of oil, as President Trump regularly boasts. But it costs the Saudis a fraction to produce theirs, and they can store excess barrels in tankers in the desert, acting as the last-resort supplier in crises like the Iran war; even as Iranian drones blasted Saudi Arabia, Aramco piped 7 million barrels a day to the kingdom’s Red Sea port.
All that gives Saudi Arabia global clout in politics and business, far beyond oil. The country is building tourism and other industries, but Aramco’s revenues underpin much of that. The company has funneled billions in recent years into the sovereign wealth fund, to finance grandiose giga-projects of Crown Prince Mohammad Bin Salman, who chairs the fund, which itself is governed by the chair of Aramco’s board. MBS has reined in spending this year, but he has already locked in no-bid hosting rights to the 2030 World Expo and the 2034 FIFA World Cup, and seems determined to be a key player in the AI race, with an AI partnership planned with Silicon Valley player Andreessen Horowitz, and huge investments in Riyadh from Amazon, Google, IBM and others. In March, Aramco CEO Amin Nasser warned that a prolonged shutdown of the Strait of Hormuz could bring “catastrophic consequences.” But it is a catastrophe Aramco is more capable of withstanding than almost anyone else.
The original version of this story misstated the business relationship between Crown Prince Mohammad Bin Salman and Aramco. He is not the chair of Aramco’s board; he chairs the sovereign wealth fund PIF, which is governed by the chair of Aramco’s board.