Basic elements of oil giant’s governance, structure and financial disclosures remain unresolved
The difficulty of quickly turning a behemoth that functions largely to support the Saudi budget into a company accountable to shareholders has crystallized over the past couple of months.
.. The prince has said the company could be valued at more than $2 trillion when it is listed.
.. Currently, about 90% of Aramco’s profit goes to the Saudi government and members of the royal family, say five people familiar with the finances. The rest, they say, gets reinvested in the company.
.. the government and Aramco have brought in a host of foreign advisers, including banks; accounting firms PricewaterhouseCoopers LLP and Ernst & Young LLP; and law firms
.. The IPO is part of his plan to wean Saudi Arabia’s economy of its dependence on oil.
.. would put IPO proceeds and much of Aramco’s stock into a giant sovereign-wealth fund. That fund would then sink tens of billions of dollars into international and domestic companies outside the oil industry.
.. Prince Mohammed also met dignitaries including former British Prime Minister Tony Blair.
.. Aramco and the government are also trying to figure out how to handle vast subsidies on Aramco’s books, including natural gas that it sells at a loss to government-owned power plants
.. In some cases plants pay about two-thirds of the cost of pumping the gas; at other times the utilities don’t pay at all
.. The company currently requires that 80% of employees in each division be Saudi nationals, which is a challenge in some areas, like accounting, where there is a dearth of trained Saudis
OPEC May Give Trump Energy Goals a Boost
An agreement to cut production could lead to higher global oil prices
Overall, the net amount of energy brought into the country fell to 11.2% of domestic need in 2015 from 30.1% in 2006, according to Gregor Macdonald, an independent energy analyst.
.. Energy experts say the biggest barrier to additional increased domestic oil production today is the low price of crude, not red tape.
Rise of Saudi Prince Shatters Decades of Royal Tradition
While vacationing in the south of France, Prince bin Salman spotted a 440-foot yacht floating off the coast. He dispatched an aide to buy the ship, the Serene, which was owned by Yuri Shefler, a Russian vodka tycoon. The deal was done within hours, at a price of approximately 500 million euros (roughly $550 million today), according to an associate of Mr. Shefler and a Saudi close to the royal family. The Russian moved off the yacht the same day.
.. His seemingly boundless ambitions have led many Saudis and foreign officials to suspect that his ultimate goal is not just to transform the kingdom, but also to shove aside the current crown prince, his 57-year-old cousin, Mohammed bin Nayef, to become the next king. Such a move could further upset his relatives and — if successful — give the country what it has never seen: a young king who could rule the kingdom for many decades.
.. Many young Saudis admire him as an energetic representative of their generation who has addressed some of the country’s problems with uncommon bluntness. The kingdom’s news media have built his image as a hardworking, businesslike leader less concerned than his predecessors with the trappings of royalty.
Others see him as a power-hungry upstart who is risking instability by changing too much, too fast.
.. The crown prince has diabetes, and suffers from the lingering effects of an assassination attempt in 2009 by a jihadist who detonated a bomb he had hidden in his rectum.
.. His younger cousin, meanwhile, has worked to remain in the spotlight, touring world capitals, speaking with foreign journalists, beingphotographed with the Facebook chairman Mark Zuckerberg and presenting himself as a face of a new Saudi Arabia.
.. the Saudi-led war in Yemen, which since it was begun last year has failed to dislodge the Shiite Houthi rebels and their allies from the Yemeni capital. The war has driven much of Yemen toward famine and killed thousands of civilians while costing the Saudi government tens of billions of dollars.
.. Although all agreed that the kingdom had to respond when the Houthis seized the Yemeni capital and forced the government into exile, Prince bin Salman took the lead, launching the war in March 2015 without full coordination across the security services.
.. Prince bin Nayef, who won the respect of Saudis and American officials for dismantling Al Qaeda in the kingdom nearly a decade ago and now sees it taking advantage of chaos in Yemen
.. This is part of what analysts say is Prince bin Salman’s attempt to foster a sense of Saudi national identity that has not existed since the kingdom’s founding in 1932.
“There has been a surge of Saudi nationalism since the campaign in Yemen began, with the sense that Saudi Arabia is taking independent collective action,”
.. “His main message is that Saudi Arabia is a force to be reckoned with,” Mr. Katulis said.
.. Saudi Arabia is one of the world’s few remaining absolute monarchies, which means that Prince bin Salman was given all of his powers by a vote of one: his own father.
.. Prince bin Nayef was the first of the founder’s grandsons to be put in line. Many hailed the move because of the prince’s success at fighting Al Qaeda and because he has only daughters, leading many to hope he would choose a successor based on merit rather than paternity.
.. Read in one way, the documents are an ambitious blueprint to change the Saudi way of life. Read in another, they are a scathing indictment of how poorly the kingdom has been run by Prince bin Salman’s elders.
.. Read in one way, the documents are an ambitious blueprint to change the Saudi way of life. Read in another, they are a scathing indictment of how poorly the kingdom has been run by Prince bin Salman’s elders.
.. Many members of the royal family remain wary of the young prince’s projects and ultimate ambitions. Some mock him as the “Prince of the Vision” and complain about his army of well-paid foreign consultants and image-makers.
.. Many members of the royal family remain wary of the young prince’s projects and ultimate ambitions. Some mock him as the “Prince of the Vision” and complain about his army of well-paid foreign consultants and image-makers.
.. Personal relationships have long been the bedrock of American-Saudi relations, yet the Obama administration has struggled to find someone to develop a rapport with the prince. The job has largely fallen to Secretary of State John Kerry
.. In September 2015, dinner at Mr. Kerry’s house ended with Prince bin Salman playing Beethoven on the piano for the secretary of state and the other guests.
.. His desire to reimagine the Saudi state is reflected in his admiration — some even call it envy — for the kingdom’s more modern and progressive neighbor in the Persian Gulf, the United Arab Emirates.
.. “If the king’s health starts to deteriorate, Mohammed bin Salman is very likely to try to get Mohammed bin Nayef out of the picture,” said Mr. Riedel, the former C.I.A. analyst.
The Rest of the 9/11 Report
There is a direct link between some of the 9/11 hijackers and presumed agents of the Saudi government, but the 28 pages do not provide any information to suggest that the Saudis at any level actually knew that anyone was involved in a terrorist plot. In fact, as a former intelligence officer myself, the snippets made public rather suggest that the Saudis were more likely keeping tabs on some citizens whom they quite rightly might have suspected of extremism. There are several hints in the text that the Saudis were aggressively running operations against their diaspora citizens.