Saudi Aramco looks downstream, and East

IN MOST WESTERN eyes Saudi Aramco inspires either awe or disdain. Financiers are in the first camp. They gobbled up the state-owned behemoth’s first-ever global bonds last week, gasped at its $111bn annual profit and, for all their professed concern about climate change, gushed over how cheaply it can pump oil for decades to come. The second group, which includes some American congressmen and chattering classes, liken Aramco’s accomplishments to sticking a straw in the ground and sucking. They attribute its earnings partly to OPEC’s price-fixing racket. And they are squeamish about Muhammad bin Salman, the crown prince into whose hands much of its money flows and who, Western spooks believe, ordered the murder last October in the kingdom’s consulate in Istanbul of a Saudi journalist, Jamal Khashoggi.

Western rivals view Aramco differently. These days they think less about its oil, and more about its shift into natural gas, refined products, chemicals and plastics. As they see it, Aramco is no potentate’s piggy bank. It is an increasingly formidable competitor—especially in Asia, where much of the future demand for petroleum products will come from.