On November 3rd it reported an adjusted net profit for the quarter from July to September of $31bn, up by 9% from the previous year (see chart). SAUDI ARAMCO, the world’s biggest oil company, has proved remarkably resilient this year. Since war broke out with Iran it has faced attacks on its facilities and disruption to the Strait of Hormuz, through which most of its barrels were shipped. Yet its cash gushers continue to flow.
In March 2022 Houthi rebels struck storage facilities in Jeddah, a year after an attack on a refinery in Riyadh. In 2019 they attacked the East-West pipeline, which carries Aramco’s oil to the Red Sea, along with two of its processing facilities. Its upstream costs, at $11.50 a barrel last year, including operating and capital expenditures, are a small fraction of the $95 a barrel fetched in its most recent quarter. The cost of restoring damaged facilities has so far been modest, with capital expenditure in the first nine months of 2026 down by 4% from the year before. Rystad Energy, a consultancy, estimates that it would stretch for around 1,000km and cost up to $7bn, equivalent to 14% of the company’s annual capex budget. An alternative is to restore the Iraq-Saudi pipeline that runs to about 1,500km, connecting Basra in Iraq to Yanbu, the Saudi port on the Red Sea. (The current pipeline was shut off during the first Gulf war in 1990, and has fallen into disrepair in the decades since.)
Aramco has been under fire before. This conflict has brought far more upheaval. But although production is down from pre-war levels, prices are up, and the company has been finding new ways to get its oil to market. Aramco’s ability to weather the conflict is helped by fat margins. In addition to expanding the East-West pipeline, Aramco intends to develop new export routes—which could become a costly endeavour and run up against volatile regional politics. One option under consideration is a pipeline from the oilfields in Saudi Arabia’s east to Duqm on the coast of Oman.
