Saudi Aramco reports profits plummeted in 2020

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The company said on Sunday that its net profit fell 44.4% to $ 49 billion in 2020. Delivering the blow, Saudi Aramco pledged to spend less this year than expected: Aramco said it was planning to spend around $ 35 billion in 2021 in capital. spending, down sharply from its previous estimate of $ 40 billion to $ 45 billion.

Nonetheless, the oil company was optimistic about the future: it maintained its dividend of $ 75 billion for the year and the company believes it will return to pre-pandemic oil production levels by the end of this year. 2021.

Saudi Aramco chief executive officer Amin Nasser said on a call with reporters that he is very optimistic for 2021 and expects the company to hit nearly 99 million barrels per day by the end of the year. He said that this outlook was based on the views of different global entities and agencies, and he predicted that demand will increase in 2022.

“The deployment of vaccines will significantly improve the situation,” he added.

The decline in profits reflects the effect of the coronavirus pandemic on global energy markets.

“As the enormous impact of Covid-19 rippled across the global economy, we stepped up our strong emphasis on capital and operational efficiency,” Nasser said.

The report of the findings comes at a time when Saudi Aramco refineries have faced drone attacks from Iran-backed Houthi rebels in Yemen.

“Our reliability in 2020 despite Covid-19 and these attacks on different parts of our facilities in the north and south and in Ras Tanura lately is 99.9%,” Nasser said. “It’s even higher than in previous years.”

This is yet another demonstration of the solid crisis management and continuity plans we have.

– CNN’s John Defterios contributed to this report.

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