Talk:Saudi Aramco/Archives/2014

This article reads like a corporate presentation

This article looks like a one-sided corporate presentation.

To add, I was under the impression that Venezuela with the Orinoco Tar sands and it's several basins has the biggest proven reserves of oil in the world (so, why saying Saudi Aramco has them?).DamianFinol 03:54, 12 June 2006 (UTC)

No one can prove the biggest reserves in the world. There are max and mins. The estimates for canada range from 6 gigas to 180 gigabarrels. Estimated values prove that Saudi Arabia has the most oil, therefore Saudi Aramco.

Is there more information on how the government acquired the company? I imagine there is some criticism in that process since it seems doubtful large oil companies would sell their share in this company knowing full well how much money could be made down the road... —Preceding unsigned comment added by 136.165.127.68 (talk) 00:28, 1 June 2010 (UTC)

xxxx

"Standard Oil of California passed this concession to an affiliate called Standard Oil of California"? What?--Jerryseinfeld 20:21, 19 Mar 2005 (UTC)

Hmmm, I didn't notice that. The chronology supplies the answer, though, and I've made the change. Mel Etitis (Μελ Ετητης) 21:22, 19 Mar 2005 (UTC)

History

According to Chevron, "Socal began [in June 1932] a year-long series of negotiations with the Saudi government, before the two sides signed a concession agreement providing the company with exploration rights for the next 60 years over an area of about 360,000 square miles. In November 1932, the company assigned the concession to its newly formed subsidiary, California Arabian Standard Oil Company (Casoc), later to become Arabian American Oil Company, or Aramco."

This does not agree with the summarized history in the article, in which the company is said to be assigned the concession in 1933.Eagle 21:59, Mar 29, 2005 (UTC)

The history is a plagiarized section from page 71 of Confronting Collapse: The Crisis of Energy and Money in a Post Peak Oil —Preceding unsigned comment added by 67.218.125.11 (talk) 18:10, 15 February 2011 (UTC)

Investment

It is mentioned about Aramco investing 465 billion ? is there a source for this it sounds extreme.

INvestment

I posted the comment about verifying the 487.5 billion plans I would like to say I am correcting it. It is not so much its 487.5 billion Saudi Riyals (130 billion USD) not 487.5 billion(USD)

http://www.adipec.com/index.cfm?fuseaction=News.Newsmain&newsId=274

Just a new timeline information

I have just added new details the TimeLine.

"2006 Saudi Aramco and Sumitomo Chemical broke ground on PETRORabigh, an integrated refining/petrochemical project. Haradh III was completed, yielding 300,000 bpd of oil. Accords were signed for two export refineries -- Jubail (with Total) and in Yanbu' (with Conoco-Phillips)."

Reference: http://www.saudiaramco.com/irj/portal/anonymous

Apparent vandalism

I took the liberty of deleting the following passage from the the lead sentence of this article: "is owned by M3T@. This communist leader told all the women to take their clothes off. But when they over took his regime, they tore Met@'s clothes off and raped him till he bled to death. This brings attention to Aramco. Its", since it appeared to have been inserted as a joke; or at best it is unverifiable and unattributed. tomrue 11:34, 8 August 2007 (UTC)

Clarify please

The article ExxonMobil has made the claim of world's largest corporate oil company in terms of boe production. And specs to compare from Saudi Aramco?--Zereshk 09:23, 4 September 2007 (UTC)

{{expert}}

I added the tag because I think the amount of gas reserves is extremely dubious, probably shifted 3 orders of magnitude in the reference itself. If someone knows any better feel free to correct it. 24.174.6.73 (talk) 02:51, 7 March 2008 (UTC)

Revenue or Market Cap?

I followed the link (number [1] in the article) to verify the claim made as to the firm's revenue; the linked article reads:

"The FT's Non-Public 150 – the first comprehensive study of the world's largest unlisted companies – found that Saudi Aramco, the state company in charge of the country's vast oil reserves, is worth an estimated $781bn, dwarfing the $454bn market capitalisation of its rival Exxon (NYSE:XOM) Mobil."

So the $781bn appears to be an estimated market cap, not a report of the company's revenue. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 68.187.69.225 (talk) 19:53, 26 April 2008 (UTC)

Revenue (2006): $168 billion USD: Saudi Aramco Company Profile - Yahoo! Finance -- 87.185.171.164 (talk) 21:11, 27 April 2008 (UTC)

CEO

The new CEO as of november 2008 is Khaled al-Faleh —Preceding unsigned comment added by 86.51.36.41 (talk) 08:41, 18 November 2008 (UTC) This decesion has been made to hide the identity of the real CEO for security purposes.

Profitable Company

"It is thought to be by far the world's most profitable company." Is this speculation appropriate? —Preceding unsigned comment added by Christopher Reuter (talk • contribs) 03:59, 20 January 2009 (UTC)

1993-1994 Spill?

John Hofmeister's been going on about this massive but, until now, unknown, spill that Saudi Aramco had in 1993-1994. I can find nothing about it anywhere. Is this an example of an amazing press containment atop the oil containment? Hofmeister's story is here.Czrisher (talk) 13:21, 28 May 2010 (UTC)

It's extremely doubtful, as such a spill would be noticed by most countries on the Arabian gulf, and would be next to impossible to cover-up. Unless there is more evidence and the info is verified by other sources i'd suggest that it's just a PR stunt, either by Hofmeister, Aramco or BP. On the other hand, Aramco's efficiency is legendary, it's pretty much the only part of Saudi Arabia that could be considered cutting-edge and well run (mainly because it's the governments cash-cow). 77.30.12.126 (talk) 16:21, 19 October 2010 (UTC)

Saudi Aramco's value between US$ 2.2 trillion and 7 trillion, or even more?

The Financial Times Non-Public 150 estimated Saudi Aramco at 0.781 trillion US$ in December 2006. This seems like an extremely conservative estimate. Saudi Aramco is the only company besides Petrochina whose estimated value exceeded US$ 1.0 trillion at some point. While I was not able to find official data for dates before or after 2006, there is speculation that Saudi Aramco's true value is actually in the range US$2.2 trillion to US$7 trillion. Why? It is producing 4 billion barrels per year, equivalent to US$300 billion. A large profit margin yields US$110 - US$180 billion in annual profits, which would translate into a reasonable market cap of US$2.2 trillion - US$3.6 trillion, according to Sheridan Titman who refers to a Financial Times estimate of US$7 trillion: http://blogs.mccombs.utexas.edu/titman/2010/03/01/more-thoughts-on-the-value-of-saudi-aramco/ . Another calculation goes like this: At US$90 per barrel, Saudi Aramco's oil reserves of 264 billion barrels are currently worth US$23 trillion - subtract the extraction costs, and that's still way more than US$15 trillion just for the oil, ignoring the gas. Obviously Saudi Aramco has dwarfed all Western companies for decades; it just did not show up in the Forbes rankings biased towards public companies. It would be nice if someone could provide more detailed data on this. Quiname (talk) 21:06, 22 January 2011 (UTC)

The Forbes Global 2000 is not "biased" towards public companies -- it is explicitly restricted to public companies: "The Forbes Global 2000 are the biggest, most powerful listed companies in the world."[1] Forbes has a separate listing of US private companies[2]. I believe they used to have a listing of private companies world-wide, but they haven't published it for some years now, perhaps because accurate information is hard to get on private companies.

"The World's Biggest Oil Companies" (Forbes 2010) has some information on the top private oil companies worldwide. --Macrakis (talk) 02:22, 8 December 2011 (UTC)

world's most valuable company?

The phrase "world's most valuable company" is ambiguous. Is there another wording that makes it clear that it refers to financial value as opposed to doing things that people find to be valuable? Guy Macon (talk) 14:08, 22 March 2011 (UTC)

I guess something like "highest estimated market value" might be better. The blog in the lead needs to go though. We shouldn't be using blogs for market value estimates. Sean.hoyland - talk 08:03, 23 March 2011 (UTC)

Shipping

Why have you removed the shipping by Kintetsu World Express? We do the sole shipping for them to Saudi Arabia. I should know, i work for them. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 77.241.176.147 (talk) 12:24, 20 June 2011 (UTC)

I wouldn't think that particular suppliers to a company are of encyclopedic interest, but perhaps I'm missing the significance of their shippers. We may well want to expand the article to include more information about Aramco's supply and logistics providers, but in itself, it doesn't seem to me that its shipper belongs in the article. --Macrakis (talk) 14:22, 20 June 2011 (UTC)

Privately held

The lede includes a statement that Saudi Aramco is the "world's largest and most valuable privately-held company". Can we really call a government-owned company "privately-held"? True, they do not sell shares, but there clearly needs to be a distinction between privately-held and government-owned companies. WikiDan61^ChatMe!_ReadMe!! 15:59, 9 December 2011 (UTC)

Yes, it's quite misleading. I've just tried to make an edit which I hope is more accurate and will be seen as a compromise. The sources say fully state owned and non-publicly listed. Sean.hoyland - talk 16:03, 9 December 2011 (UTC)

I've also left messages for Enjinerm7md and AramcoIT3601 suggesting that they explain the reasoning for their edits here. It's not really clear why they keep making them. Sean.hoyland - talk 05:22, 10 December 2011 (UTC)

Umm... might I suggest that AramcoIT3601 (talk · contribs) may have a conflict of interest, based on the username and contribution pattern? Allens (talk) 04:00, 11 December 2011 (UTC)

Could just be a coincidence. :) Sean.hoyland - talk 05:47, 11 December 2011 (UTC)

Perhaps a request for page semi-protection is needed, to prevent further vandalism?

Yes, probably. Sean.hoyland - talk 14:59, 16 December 2011 (UTC)

Financial information on Saudi Aramco

The article currently Aramco's 2011 revenues as US$ 790b. I would like to know where that figure comes from -- it is not footnoted and as far as I know, Aramco does not release any financial figures. It is also suspiciously close to the estimated market value of the company ($781b); that value is footnoted to a Financial Times article which gives its "estimated market value" as of December 2005 (though our article gives it as 2011). Then again, some other articles in the FT claim that its value could be anywhere from $2-7,000b, most likely $2-4,000b.

Also, some writers appear to assume that Saudi Aramco owns the hydrocarbon reserves of Saudi Arabia and sells them on its own account. That is not apparently not correct. The Saudi state owns the reserves; Aramco is paid for production. (see [3]). The market value of a services company is quite different from a company that actually owns the mineral rights itself. --Macrakis (talk) 20:51, 18 February 2012 (UTC)

The $790 b. is totally unsourced, so feel free to delete it. In List of companies by revenue i am using $182.396 b. figure sourced from DS100 list [4] --Jklamo (talk) 22:22, 18 February 2012 (UTC)

Yeeah, I also read that the Saudi state owns reserves, but from a different source (US). I will try to find it again. Warren (talk) 18:40, 21 February 2012 (UTC)

Slogan

I saw that slogan was removed. Does Saudi Arammco have a slogan? Warren (talk) 00:52, 25 February 2012 (UTC)

What I found said "Energy to the World" is that still current? anyone know? Warren (talk) 20:41, 25 June 2012 (UTC)

Orphaned references in Saudi Aramco

I check pages listed in Category:Pages with incorrect ref formatting to try to fix reference errors. One of the things I do is look for content for orphaned references in wikilinked articles. I have found content for some of Saudi Aramco's orphans, the problem is that I found more than one version. I can't determine which (if any) is correct for this article, so I am asking for a sentient editor to look it over and copy the correct ref content into this article.

Reference named "bbc":

• From Saudi Arabia–United States relations: "US pulls out of Saudi Arabia". BBC News. April 29, 2003. Retrieved 29 November 2009.
• From Shamoon: "Shamoon virus targets energy sector infrastructure". BBC News. 17 August 2012. Retrieved 19 August 2012.
• From Halliburton: "Halliburton's Iraq role expands". BBC News. May 7, 2003. Retrieved April 28, 2006.
• From Armed Forces of Saudi Arabia: "US pulls out of Saudi Arabia". BBC News. 29 April 2003. Archived from the original on 6 January 2010. Retrieved 29 November 2009. {{cite news}}: Unknown parameter |deadurl= ignored (|url-status= suggested) (help)
• From Venezuela: "Venezuela: Energy overview". BBC. 16 February 2006. Retrieved 10 July 2007.
• From Custodian of the Two Holy Mosques: Wood, Paul (August 1, 2005). "Life and legacy of King Fahd". BBC News. Retrieved April 6, 2011.

I apologize if any of the above are effectively identical; I am just a simple computer program, so I can't determine whether minor differences are significant or not. AnomieBOT⚡ 14:09, 24 October 2012 (UTC)

Pretty impressive for a robot. I don't see any major differences. Warren (talk) 23:36, 7 January 2013 (UTC)

What is Saudi Aramco doing in sustainability engineering?

I would like the major fossil fuel company articles to indicate how they intend to transition to carbon-neutral fuels such as this work and "power to gas." I need to know whether they support emerging chemical engineering research such as catalysts for carbon-neutral transportation fuels, whether they are working on compressed air energy storage such as [5] and [6], airborne wind turbines such as [7], and on extracting carbon from seawater such as this PARC method in order to solve their long-term corporate viability issues. I do not believe it is possible to have a truly balanced article on a fossil fuel company without some indication of their long term prospects. Tim AFS (talk) 04:01, 13 December 2013 (UTC)

I also need to know whether they are developing electrical grid energy storage in their existing expended oil and gas caverns along with mineshafts and mines for pumped-storage hydroelectricity where ordinary hydroelectric power is unavailable. Tim AFS (talk) 09:14, 18 December 2013 (UTC)