, Columnist
Saudi Aramco May Have to Settle for Just a Trillion or So
What I learned from a first pass through the oil giant's financials.
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My colleagues at Bloomberg News scored a Saudi Aramco-sized scoop Friday morning, detailing some financial data on the oil behemoth. So what does it tell us?
Saudi Arabian Oil Co. is fantastically profitable, with net income of about $34 billion in the first half of 2017, according to figures reviewed, more than four times what Exxon Mobil Corp. earned in that period. Implied costs of production, including overhead and depreciation, appear to be less than $10 a barrel. Given that Brent crude oil averaged only about $53 a barrel back then, and Aramco was only pumping about 9.9 million barrels of crude oil a day, the implication is this year's profits will be positively yuge.