A new issue brief written by Jean-François Seznec for the Atlantic Council explores the Saudi Aramco-SABIC merger and Aramco’s strategy to make the Saudi oil giant “like most other large international oil companies, except much bigger.”
This issue brief studies “SABIC’s importance to energy and chemical businesses worldwide, and it raises questions about whether the merger with Aramco will require a substantial reorganization of SABIC—along with accompanying concerns about both the workforce and jobs.”
“[A]ll IOCs have a very large presence in the downstream as well as the upstream and increasingly seek to become dominant in the natural gas business and in the downstream thereof,” Seznec writes. “SABIC will provide Aramco a major boost in its presence in the chemical industry in Saudi Arabia and worldwide.”
Aramco announced this year that it would purchase 70 percent of SABIC from the Public Investment Fund (PIF) of Saudi Arabia.
The paper also explores unforeseen consequences of the merger and the SABIC acquisition as part of an overall investment strategy.
