Aramco

**Aramco** is a Saudi Arabian Oil Company, with its roots in 1933. It is also known as Saudi Aramco or the Saudi Arabian Oil Group. It is mainly state-owned, and its base is in Dhahran, Saudi Arabia. At present, Aramco is considered the largest oil producer company and has a strong presence in the energy markets of Asia, Europe, and North America.

Saudi Aramco is in the Arab League Nine-teenth member’s  which is an international political organization of Arab states in North Africa; West Asia, and is also present in other countries, where it performs support functions  for others.

## History 
In 1933, Saudi Arabia signed an agreement with the Standard Oil Company of California (SOCAL), that resulted in the creation of the California Arabian Standard Oil Company (CASOC). This was a concession agreement. The company started its drilling works two years later. In 1938, their efforts started paying off in finding oil, and other US companies joined in. By the late 1940s, the company was hitting milestones and establishing its name in the field and had expanded across Saudi Arabia quickly. By 1950, Aramco was owned by four companies and had its base in New York, United States. In 1952, the headquarters moved to Dhahran, Saudi Arabia.

In 1950 Aramco opened a pipeline from Saudi Arabia to Lebanon, which was closed in 1983. Two years prior to that, Aramco opened another pipeline to the Arabian-Persian Gulf. Aramco has built the longest pipeline in the world, named “the Trans-Arabian Pipeline.”

In 1944 the company was renamed from California Arabian Standard Oil Company to Arabian-American Oil Company, hence the acronym ARAMCO. Under the rule of King Faisal, and in the 1970s, Saudi Arabia bought up to 60% of the American, at the time, oil company.  In 1980s, Saudi Arabia bought the remaining 40% of the company and changed its name to Saudi Aramco.

### Saudi Aramco's IPO 
In 2017, Aramco decided to open an Initial Public Offering, IPO, which had many delays and was set into motion two years later. The company's IPO raised $25.6 billion, selling three billion shares. The amount raised by the IPO was only the 1.5% of the value of Saudi Aramco. These liquid reserves have a reserve life of around 54 years. ARAMCO produced 10.3 million barrels of crude oil every day in 2018. In 2018, ARAMCO also produced 1.1 million barrels of natural gas liquids and 8.9 billion standard cubic feet per day of natural gas. This makes ARAMCO the biggest oil company of the world.  ARAMCO made a profit of $161 billion in 2022.

Since the first oil discovery at the Dammam No. 7 well in 1938, a new drilling technique has been created. This new technique looks at the geological structure underneath the surface of the earth. This helps ARAMCO find new potential locations of oil reservoirs. 

### Corporate governance 
ARAMCO is managed by a Board of Directors and supervised by a Board of 11 Directors. This Board oversees ARAMCO and guides the business and affairs of ARAMCO. 

### Treatment of workers 
In December 2020, an article of the newspaper The Financial Times was published. It discusses bad treatment of workers who were taken advantage of by ARAMCO. More specifically, it talks about the refusal of medical treatment of one of the foreign workers for ARAMCO, Alwyn Whitcher, which led to his death. The article goes on to discuss other foreign employees of ARAMCO who were mistreated. Five former employees of ARAMCO talk about their mistreatment while working for ARAMCO. One employee brings up a work environment of fear and intimidation. Another former employee mentions racism and bullying.

### Controversies around the 2019 IPO 
To reach the 2 trillion U.S. dollar goal of the IPO of ARAMCO, many rich Saudi families were forced and bullied into investing in ARAMCO’s IPO. A lot of these families were held against their will in the Ritz-Carlton hotel in Riyadh in 2017 and 2018. This was part of a governmental action to crush corruption in Saudi Arabia. These actions were later denied by Saudi state officials.

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