Saudi Arabia’s state oil company is building an oil-refining empire, a major shift for the world’s No. 1 crude producer as it tries to shore up its balance sheet ahead of the world’s biggest-ever IPO and make up for income lost to OPEC production cuts. Over the past five years, Saudi Arabian Oil Co., known as Aramco, has boosted its global refining capacity by more than a third to 5.4 million barrels a day, according to Scottish energy consultancy Wood Mackenzie. New facilities along Saudi Arabia’s Red Sea and Persian Gulf coasts are part of the increase, and the kingdom has commissioned an additional refinery in its southwest region that is set to come online in 2019. These moves and others, including taking full control of the biggest U.S. refinery, in Port Arthur, Texas, have vaulted Aramco’s global refining capacity beyond that of Western rivals such as Exxon Mobil […]