Saudi Aramco tested by deglobalization and energy transition

Al-Monitor Pro Members

Gerald Kepes

President, Competitive Energy Strategies, LLC

Dec. 7, 2022

Saudi Arabia’s national oil company (NOC), Saudi Aramco, is deeply enmeshed in a national project to build a new, more sustainable economy, and to perpetuate Saudi rule in the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia (KSA). To build more complex economies, greater state capacity is needed, requiring new organizational arrangements and capabilities. No institution in the kingdom has more capacity than Saudi Aramco. From its perspective, the NOC is actively engaged in the kingdom’s transformation but seeks to protect its institutional prerogatives, in order to avoid losing its operational and strategic independence.