Saudi Aramco, the national oil company of Saudi Arabia, is by far the largest oil company in the world. The company produces around 13 percent of the world’s oil, but its business operations have been notoriously opaque for decades. It has often been stated that the company has plenty of low-cost legacy wells that drop its overall production costs to $10 per barrel, or even lower. Because there was no way to audit this information, the world was left to guess at the actual breakeven costs for the world’s largest oil company. This week Saudi Aramco lifted the veil on its financial condition in a bond offering for the company. (PDF link here ). There are many important financial details in the filing. The company is indeed the world’s most profitable, earning $111 billion on $356 billion in revenue in 2018. This is nearly double the $59.4 billion made […]