Saudi Aramco is now planning to explore oil and gas resources outside of the Saudi Arabian kingdom. This is according to a recent interview given by the oil minister, Khalid al Falih, to Financial Times. Falih said that, “Going forward the world is going to be Saudi Aramco’s playground,” referring to the national oil company of Saudi Arabia. Al Falih was the CEO of Aramco from 2009 to 2015. This path marks a shift from Aramco’s previous upstream strategy. The highly profitable company has been expanding and diversifying for about 30 years, but it has never before sought to exploit natural resources outside of Saudi Arabia . In fact, when I last asked Aramco executives whether they had any such plans just over a year ago, they denied that they did. In fact, they seemed rather surprised at the idea that they might pursue upstream oil investment outside of […]