Last year, it had a good $ 111 billion profit, and in the first nine months of 2019, despite the missile and drone strikes on the Abkaik oil factory and the Khurai oil field, more than $ 68 billion was added - oil and gas company Saudi Aramco is doing well Shops. In fact, it is the most profitable company in the world, even before well-known IT cashcows like Apple, Microsoft or the Google mother alphabet.
So far, the abundant gushing money of Saudi Aramco flowed into the Saudi budget. About 60 percent of government revenues are attributable to the sale of oil and gas. In the future, international investors should now also be able to participate in the company. A small portion of the shares is to be traded on the Saudi Arabian stock exchange Tadawul. The competent financial market authority CMA issued the appropriate permission on Sunday. Later, the shares should also be offered on international trading venues.
It's likely to be the biggest IPO ever. So far, the record holds the Chinese company Alibaba, which came five years ago on revenue of 25 billion dollars. Whether Saudi Aramco exceeds this mark is still not certain. Because how big the share of the company that is offered for sale, is not yet clear. For example, two percent are talking. Nor is it clear yet how much money the Saudi government will take with the deal. But it's going to be in the tens of billions, that's for sure. The total value of Saudi Aramco would thus be beyond one trillion dollars. It could also be more than two trillion.
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Many corporations still make good money in promoting and selling fossil fuels. ExxonMobil, Shell, BP, Chevron and Total, for example. But Saudi Aramco plays a special role in the industry. In recent years, his company has promoted every eighth barrel of crude oil produced worldwide, chief executive Amin H. Nasser has just stated. The proven reserves owned by the company were five times larger at the end of 2018 than those of the largest international oil companies, the manager said.
Money can only be made by a company like Saudi Aramco if it continues to produce and export large quantities of fossil fuels in the long run. In the process, the IPCC has calculated what needs to be done if humanity wants to limit global warming to 1.5 degrees compared to pre-industrial times: By 2050, renewable energies - biomass, hydropower, wind and solar - will need 70 to 85 percent of global electricity consumption. Gas is expected to account for a further eight percent - but only if the not uncontroversial CCS technology is used, ie the separation and subsequent storage of CO2 in the soil.
Because of their climate impact in a responsible economic system, fossil fuels are no longer available sooner rather than later. But corporations like Saudi Aramco depend on them to sell their products for many decades - and thus continue to burden the atmosphere.
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The British newspaper Guardian has recently reported, citing figures from the Climate Accountability Institute, that Saudi Aramco is the sole operator with the world's highest share of man-made emissions of climate-changing gases, most notably carbon dioxide. For the period between 1965 and 2017, therefore, about 60 gigatonnes of greenhouse gas emissions came together. That equates to almost 4.4 percent of all non-natural emissions.
So who buys such shares? For example, institutions that hope for good profits at least in the short term. These could be, for example, pension funds. Not all, but some. (Read here, why Norway's sovereign wealth fund draws billions from fossil industries and invests in green technologies.) Or the index funds, which are popular with many investment funds, when Saudi Aramco trades internationally, becoming part of a major stock market index. Then well-meaning retail investors could earn their returns by polluting the atmosphere.
$ 75 billion for shareholders
Saudi Aramco has announced plans to distribute a dividend of € 75 billion to its shareholders next year. To the classification: For this amount one could buy the companies Continental and Bayer completely according to current market capitalization. So both together. However, in a spring prospectus, Saudi Aramco also admitted that the consequences of climate change and the discussions about it pose a risk to its own profitability.
Hardly anyone today wants to publicly stand as a climate offender. Saudi Aramco is therefore part of the Oil and Gas Climate Initiative (OGCI) with a dozen other major companies in the industry. Among other things, the members, according to their own statements, strongly support the expansion of the use of CCS technology. In fact, they are talking about the CCUS technique because the carbon produced by burning fossil fuels is not just locked up in the ground but is best used in industry. Therefore, the "U" from the English word "use", ie "use".
The OGCI, in its own words, supports the goals of the Paris Climate Agreement and states that it aims to achieve zero net emissions of greenhouse gases from a global perspective. In a nutshell, this means that the burning of fossil fuels is okay if the resulting CO2 is only separated and stored in the soil.
Brakeman in the climate negotiations
The fact that the Saudi government is not particularly interested in international climate protection has, of course, been shown time and again at the international climate conferences. Here, the country often appeared as a brakeman and was able to staged for a long time as a representative of the developing and emerging countries.
Nationally, Saudi Arabia certainly has an interest in promoting environmentally friendly energies, such as the large-scale production of solar modules. Although expansion targets for the photovoltaic industry, which have been announced publicly, have partly been recaptured, the government has made it clear that it believes in the potential of technology, inter alia, for the operation of seawater desalination plants.
Critics say that there is one main reason for this: If less oil is used up to date for the production of potable water in one's own country, more can be exported.