It’s what you can’t see—the oil beneath the Arabian sands—that potential investors in Saudi Aramco’s on-again, off-again initial public offering (IPO) ought to focus on. The truth about the remaining oil resources beneath the Saudi desert continues to be a state secret. I’ll elaborate on this after a little background to set the context. Recently, Saudi Aramco, the state-owned Saudi oil company, delayed its planned IPO again . For those who missed the previous time, plans for the IPO first came to light in 2016 as part of Saudi Arabia’s 2030 Vision , essentially a plan to diversify the country’s economy away from heavy dependence on oil. The feverish attention the proposed IPO produced abated when the world’s largest company unexpectedly withdrew it in 2018 . The financial firms advising the government were let go as the government looked for other ways to raise money for its 2030 Vision […]