Company developing ‘radical’ compression engines: Al-Khowaiter Saudi Aramco says crude-to-chemicals helping drive oil demand While Saudi Arabia tries to wean its economy off crude, the nation’s flagship company is devising new ways to make money from the fuel. Saudi Aramco , the world’s biggest oil exporter, is investing in developing more efficient gasoline-powered engines and testing new methods of turning a barrel of crude directly into petrochemicals. The goal: To prolong the global demand for petroleum for decades to come by making engines and chemicals more cost-effective, even as electric vehicles and alternative sources of energy nibble away at crude’s market share. “Radical new engine technologies,” such as compressing gasoline in a car’s cylinders instead of igniting it with spark plugs, will prove that “the internal combustion engine has a long way to go in terms of economic viability, and this will bring down its cost dramatically,” Ahmed al-Khowaiter, […]