Investors hoping a Saudi Arabian Oil Co. IPO will provide a chance to buy a stake in the world’s largest crude producer may have to wait. The company says one option is to sell shares in its refining assets rather than the parent. While that would lock private capital out of the world’s biggest oil fields, it still offers an immense global business with plants spread from Louisiana to Japan, processing more than 3.1 million barrels a day. “The Saudis aren’t just pumping crude out of the ground and selling it anymore,” said Jim Krane, energy research fellow at the Baker Institute at Rice University in Houston. “They’re now converting a massive share of that crude into all sorts of refined products. Things like high-quality gasoline and low-sulfur diesel, and petrochemicals.” Saudi Aramco, as the state-owned oil monopoly is known, confirmed on Friday it was studying options for a […]