Oil’s $1 Trillion Question

If it wasn’t a sales pitch, it really sounded like one. “Aramco is by far the lowest-cost producer,” said Khalid al-Falih, the Saudi oil minister, at the Future Investment Initiative in Riyadh. The October gathering, dubbed “Davos in the desert,” brought together a who’s who of business and finance, including the bosses of Blackstone Group LP and Credit Suisse Group AG. Al-Falih was talking up Saudi Arabian Oil Co., also known as Aramco, the state-owned oil company the kingdom is planning to sell shares of.

Aramco is the world’s largest energy company. With a monopoly on exploiting a good quarter of the planet’s oil reserves, it pumps more crude than Exxon Mobil, Chevron, and Royal Dutch Shell combined. Regardless of the rise of electric vehicles and the fight against climate change, “Saudi Aramco is going to be the supplier of last resort,” al-Falih said. “I am certain the last barrel that gets produced globally is going to be here in Saudi Arabia.”