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Saudi Aramco highlights financial and operational resilience despite COVID-19

Industry

The Saudi Arabian Oil Company (Saudi Aramco) has announced its results for the second and first half of 2020, highlighting the financial and operational resilience of the company and its commitment to shareholders despite the challenging market conditions resulting from the COVID-19 pandemic

Aramco president and CEO Amin H. Nasser said, “Despite COVID-19 bringing the world to a standstill, Saudi Aramco kept going. We have proven our financial resilience and operational reliability, setting a record in our business operations, while at the same time taking steps to ensure the health and safety of our people.

“Strong headwinds from reduced demand and lower oil prices are reflected in our second-quarter results. Yet we delivered solid earnings because of our low production costs, unique scale, agile workforce, and unrivalled financial and operational strength. This helped us deliver on our plan to maintain a second-quarter dividend of US$18.75bn to be paid in the third quarter.

“We will continue to pursue our long-term growth and diversification strategy to capture unrealised and additional value from every hydrocarbon molecule we produce – driving global commerce and enhancing people’s lives. The completion of our historic acquisition of a 70 per cent stake in SABIC is yet more evidence of that forward momentum and a testament to our healthy financial position.

“We are seeing a partial recovery in the energy market as countries around the world take steps to ease restrictions and reboot their economies. Meanwhile, we continue to place people’s safety first and have adapted to the new normal, implementing wide-ranging precautions to limit the spread of COVID-19 wherever we operate.

“We are determined to emerge from the pandemic stronger and will continue making progress on our long-term strategic journey, through ongoing investments in our business – which has one of the lowest upstream carbon footprints in the world.”

Despite the ongoing global economic disruption and challenges facing the energy sector, Saudi Aramco continued to deliver on its shareholders’ commitment by declaring a dividend of US$18.75bn in the Q2 2020, compared to US$ 13.4bn in Q2 2019.

Saudi Aramco navigated challenging market conditions to record net income of US$6.6bn for Q2 and US$$23.2bn for the H1 2020. Free cash flow was US$6.1bn in Q2 and US$21.1bn for H1 2020, respectively. Capital expenditure was US$6.2bn in Q2 and US$13.6bn for H1 2020.