Aramco Services Company history

In 1951 Aramco found the first offshore oil field in the Middle East.

After his death in 1952, an obituary of Steineke called him "the man who more than anyone else… is entitled to credit for discovering the large oil reserves which have been found in Saudi Arabia."

And in 1958, Aramco’s crude oil production exceeded 1 million barrels in a calendar year.

On August 9, 1960, the chairman of Standard Oil of New Jersey, Munroe Rathbone, decided unilaterally to shave 14¢ off the posted price, a cut of some seven percent, in order to increase its competitiveness in Europe vis-a-vis Soviet crude exports.

On November 30, 1962, the General Petroleum and Mineral Organization of Saudi Arabia (Petromin) was founded.

7 was tapped, according to the 1963 Aramco World article.

Hyundai Oilbank is a refinery in South Korea, established in 1964.

By 1965 Tapline enabled Aramco to market some 44 percent of its total crude oil exports to Europe, a greater share than that of nearer markets in Asia.

The Shaybah field, located in the Rub’ al-Khali or Empty Quarter, was discovered in 1968.

Although Petromin was not producing any crude oil, by 1970 it had joint interests in many concessions and operated a refinery at Jiddah and a fertilizer plant in Dammam.

And by 1971, shipments of crude oil and petroleum products from the Ras Tanura Marine Terminal surpassed one billion barrels per year for the very first time.

Standard Oil Company (New Jersey) changed its name to Exxon Corporation in 1972.

In June 1974 Saudi Arabia took over 60 percent of ARAMCO under that participation agreement.

In 1975 Aramco was given the task of constructing and operating a gas system that could fuel Saudi Arabia's drive towards industrialization.

In January 1977 Aramco formed a subsidiary, the Saudi Consolidated Electric Company (SCECO), to construct and operate an electric grid system for the Eastern Province.

In 1978, forty years after oil was discovered in commercial quantities in Saudi Arabia, ARAMCO's cumulative total production exceeded 30 billion barrels.

The master gas system (MGS), as it came to be known, started operation in 1980.

The master gas system (MGS), as it came to be known, started operation in 1980. As a result of the agreement between the government and Aramco, SCECO became an independently managed company on January 1, 1983.

Under Saudi ownership the company commissioned construction of east-west pipelines to carry crude oil and natural gas liquids from the Eastern Province to Yanbu, on the Red Sea, and in 1984 it acquired its first four supertankers.

By 1985 Saudi Arabia was tired of shouldering the full burden of price defense and looking on as its revenues declined.

Following the meeting of the Aramco board of directors in San Francisco on April 8 and 9, 1987, the decision was taken to cut its own membership from 20 to 13.

By 2000 more than 85 percent of its 54,500 workers were Saudi citizens, and most of its contracts went to Saudi-owned or joint venture businesses. Its first Saudi president, Ali al-Naimi, took the company's helm in 1989.

As a result of the 1990 Persian Gulf crisis, Saudi Aramco emerged as one of the most influential participants in the global oil industry.

The company resumed its quest for vertical integration in the aftermath of the war, merging another state-owned firm, Saudi Arabian Marketing & Refining Co. (Samarec) in June 1993, moving into the ranks of the world's ten largest refiners.

In 1994, Saudi Aramco acquired a 40% interest in Petron Corporation, the largest crude oil refiner and marketer in the Philippines.

After nine years as Saudi Arabia's minister of Petroleum and Mineral Resources, Hisham Nazer was succeeded by Saudi Aramco President and CEO Ali Naimi in 1995.

In 1996, the company purchased 50% interest in privately held Greek refiner Motor Oil (Hellas) Corinth Refineries S.A., and its marketing affiliate, Avinoil Industrial Commercial and Maritime Oil Company, S.A.

Named Motiva in 1998, the United States refining entity expanded to include a new partner, Shell, who brought to the deal a fourth refinery.

By 2000 more than 85 percent of its 54,500 workers were Saudi citizens, and most of its contracts went to Saudi-owned or joint venture businesses.

In 2002, Texaco exited the JV, with Aramco and Shell remaining in a 50/50 partnership.

Discovered in 2006 in the thickest, extremely prolific and complex carbonate layers, the project was fast-tracked, taking only six years to go from discovery to production.

Khursaniyah began producing oil in August 2008.

The field, which entered production in August 2009, is 250 kilometers south of Riyadh and about 50 kilometers northeast of our Hawtah crude oil facility, the first producing facility in the Central Region of Saudi Arabia.

In three successive years, beginning in 2013, the company opened state-of-the-art research centers in Houston, Boston and Detroit to pursue technology breakthroughs with partners in key innovation hubs.

In 2014, however, prices started to crash, losing more than 50% of their value in rapid order.

Our second 250,000 bpd expansion project at Shaybah came on-stream in 2016, raising its overall production capacity to 1 million bpd of Arabian Extra Light crude oil — double the facility’s original capacity.

As of December 2018, the proved reserves were 34.03 billion barrels of oil equivalent.

In 2019, Saudi Aramco became a public company with shares listed on the Saudi Stock Exchange (Tadawul).

In 2020, Aramco confirmed that it would proceed with the divestment of the Jazan Integrated Gasification and Combined Cycle Plant into a Joint Venture (JV) between Aramco, Air Products, ACWA Power, and Air Products Qudra, integrating the Air Separation Unit into the JV.