Saudi Arabia’s state-owned oil giant Aramco may soon open up a massive upstream asset to foreign investment. It would be a rare move for OPEC’s top oil producer and the world’s largest crude exporter, which operates all oil and gas upstream assets in the Kingdom under a multi-decade concession agreement. Saudi Aramco is now looking to monetize its assets on the one hand, and raise money for the enormous capital investments needed to develop new assets on the other hand. Opening up asset developments is one of the ways to raise money, considering that the oil sales Aramco is bringing in for the Kingdom are still being used to reduce the government deficit that had shot up with the oil price crash last year. Aramco’s own capital budget is not unlimited either, since the oil giant is paying $75 billion in annual dividends to shareholders, the largest of which […]