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Aramco has long been the beating heartof Saudi Arabia's economy.

 But in less than five years time, thekingdom hopes to reach its goal of building an economy that moves away fromits traditional reliance on oil.

 We think of ourselves as a technologycompany delivering energy, to be honest with you.

Technology has always been our competitive advantage.

The company has been evolving ever since its inception.

Aramco plays a significant role in Saudi's diversification agenda.

Aramco's journey started in 1933 when the Saudi government granted explorationrights to the Standard Oil Company of California that created the CalifornianArabian Standard Oil Company and eventually led to the discovery of oilin commercial quantities at Dammam.

 While number seven.

This marks a turning point in Aramco and Saudi Arabian history.

In 1944, the company was renamed to Aramco, the Arabian American OilCompany, and later that became Saudi Aramco, reflecting its transition to afully state owned company by the late eighties.

Look at that.

 You can feel the crowd here at handlooking at the route.

 Now, Nasser joins Aramco in 1982 as anoil engineer before working up the ranks to become CEO in 2015.

So this is the geology.

 Where does the technology come into it?Well, technology comes in the modelling and and some of the technology, you cansee it here.

 So we digitize all of that and we keptit here so they can look at it.

 And then while, you know, having moredata to see rather than only the what you see in front of you here in 2019,the Saudi government sold down 1.

5% of the company, raising $25.

6 billion,which to date remains the largest IPO in history.

Today, the Saudi government and sovereign wealth funds PLF jointly ownaround 98% of Aramco's shares.

 The oil giant accounts for approximately60% of total Saudi government revenue and the broader oil sector, with Aramcoas the main player makes up roughly 30 to 40% of the kingdom's GDP.

Relying on one sector only to drive the Saudi economy is not right that this iswhere the region is helping other sectors and growing oldersectors across the kingdom to grow.

 Oil and gas is still important.

That's why you see the growth you see here.

We are very pragmatic here in the kingdom.

You're talking about 200, 230 gigawatts of solar and wind.

We believe in hydrogen where we would be happy to produce hydrogen.

Actually, we have one of the biggest projects in green hydrogen at NIO, andwe will be more than happy to build more green hydrogen and blue hydrogen in thekingdom.

 And at the same time, we are in carboncapture and storage, but we are not neglecting hydrocarbons.

We have a healthy oil production revenue, maximum sustained capacity of12 million.

 We are growing our gas by more than 60%by 2050.

 So we are focusing in our conventionaland growing it while decarbonising at the same time.

And we are building the new, which is solar, wind, hydrogen and others.

The kingdom's crown jewel is central to the ambitions of Vision 2030, Thegovernment programme, aiming to diversify the economy away fromhydrocarbon dependence, attract foreign investments and modernize the SaudiArabian society.

 Carlos Slim is chief economist atStandard Chartered, covering regions including the Middle East.

In the past, the diversification strategy was investing petrodollars oilrevenues abroad so that they would be uncorrelated to the price of oil.

And for the last decade, aramco's dividends to the budget have contributedindirectly to funding a lot of the diversification strategy in the domesticeconomy.

 So they remain a very important piece ofthe Saudi economy, of the revenues in order to fund that government spendingand that investment from creating neom a $500 billion futuristic city in thedesert to hosting the 2034 World Cup and building out a new major airport inRiyadh.

 Vision 2030 is well underway.

The kingdom's transition is not without its challenges.

Opec+ production cuts undermine a key source of revenue for the country.

Despite diversification efforts in the first quarter of 2025, Saudi Arabiareported its largest budget deficit since 2021.

That's impacted spending for some of the kingdom's largest investment projects.

And Aramco has increasingly tapped into debt markets, which the company has putdown to looking to lower its weighted cost of capital and optimizing thecapital structure.

 Our targeting today is around 5% tostill one of the lowest gearing.

 You know, it's almost half of the.

Average compared to other energy industry players in the market.

And we will continue to tap into that additional bond market seton the future.

 But we we have a low gearing ratio,which still, as you consider Terry, to consider compared to any others, anyplayers in the markets.

 The size of the dividends, especially toits largest shareholder.

 The Saudi government remains underscrutiny relative to free cash flow generated.

Geopolitical tensions have also remains an undercurrent of concern since the2019 attacks on Aramco's cupcake facility.

Although the company resumed partial operations within 24 hours, the incidenttriggered a heightened focus on security.

In response, Saudi Arabia has worked to ease regional tensions, includingrestoring diplomatic ties with Iran in 2023, Even as the company managesnear-term pressures, Aramco is investing in areas that could define its long termfuture.

 I think gas is going to be a majorgrowth area for the company today, and this is not known to many people.

We are a large gas producer.

 Ashraf Ghazali is Aramco's EVP forStrategy and Corporate Development.

 He lays out the non-oil key strategicpillars of the business.

 Our gas business is going to grow by 60%by 2030 compared to the 2021 levels, and you will see the company grow andcontinue to invest in a lot of low carbon or new energy.

In particular, you'll see Aramco investing now in renewables, energy andhydrogen and ammonia, as well as carbon capture and storage technology.

Not to mention digital and digitization is a big area for us.

Further integration down to value chain is an important area for you tobasically have an outlet for these vast hydrocarbon resources chemicals to us asa as a main building block for all modern economies and societies, you'llalways need commodities and materials like plastics and polymers for for, forany any type of economic development going forward.

Like in most industries, one of its most ambitious bets to move the companyforward is artificial intelligence.

 A.

I.

, we see, is one of the mostimportant developments in this century in terms of technology.

And so we have been quick to deploy AI in our operations and to apply it to ourbusiness.

 Ahmed al-Kuwaiti, who leads tech andinnovation at Aramco data from the company's facilities and operations, endup here at its fourth Industrial Revolution Center.

Last year, Aramco announced it was developing a large scale industrial airmodel called Aramco Meta Brain.

 The brain is a 70 billion parametermodel and the reason we chose to try to build a proprietary large language modelis because we have to use our own data and it gives us the competitiveadvantage.

 So we have trained that model with allof our historical data engineering reports standards, and that model is nowused to advise our engineers and operators and every single employee inthe company.

 So we have deployed that model on 70,000workstations across our facilities, in our offices.

But not only is it providing advice, but it is also informing for betterdecisions.

 It is the base foundation for many ofthe applications.

 We are doing an optimization, forexample, and operating our facilities.

 So that's the way we are able to bringA.

I.

 right to the field.

This is where you see a lot of the use cases delivering results for us.

Technology Realization in 2023 used to be $2 billion.

There's so much we realized from technology in 20 for $4 billion, andwe're looking at 2 to $4 billion a year.

 Technologies like AI is is in everythingemitted not only in terms of allowing us to reduce our cost structure moreefficiency.

 It also helps in reducing our carbonfootprint, which is very important to enable.

You see it reducing emissions, increasing productivity.

And with that the number of wells, water reduction and with that emissions andthis pumping in everything it's emitted and we are looking at the benefits ofAI, integrating it in everything that we are doing.

Even with big strides in digital innovation, Aramco, at its core, remainsan energy giant.

 As CEO of one of the largest hydrocarboncompanies in the world, Nasser has been advocating for what he considers a morepragmatic approach to the energy transition.

Well, we have always said that we need to transition, we say, toward a realitycheck in the transition to deliver on our ambition for a net zero.

What we need is a pragmatic solutions to deliver on what we are all aiming for.

Almost 70 to 80% of the energy global energy in 2050 will be in the GlobalSouth, not in the global north.

 So one size fits all will not work.

And I think that is driven heavily by incentive.

That's not sustainable.

 The minute these incentives disappearand they will distribute per day, that additional cost will be passed toconsumer.

 And that's where we are seeing theincrease in cost.

 What we need is something that, whilesustainable, is affordable and secure.

 We have always talked about differentmix of energy that it will be required.

 Aramco has a net zero 2050 target forits scope one and scope two emissions and prides itself on having the lowestcarbon intensity for upstream extraction compared to other energy companies.

But this does not include scope three emissions which stem from end usercombustion of oil and fossil fuels and constitute the lion's share ofemissions.

 I have to say that not all crude oil isequal.

 You know, we take a lot of pride in thefact that we are the lowest upstream carbon intensity producer and has beenfor a while, and that's a result of decades of responsible and sustainableoperations.

 You know, it's important for us also toadhere to our commitments toward the net zero ambition and keeping an eye on whatlevers of decarbonisation are available to us.

We have been running flower minimisation programs for four decades.

We have methane intensity that is the lowest in the market.

All of this combined actually is where we position ourselves as the undisputedleader when it comes to carbon intensity and environmental metrics out there.

Aramco looks to redefine its role as Saudi Arabia reimagines its future.

We believe Saudi will remain a major oil producer in the global economy.

We don't expect this to change, but we believe that the non-oil GDP expansionwill happen in parallel to Saudi remaining and a major commodity playeron the global front, on the regional front and its G20 capacity.

We just expect that the non-oil development will happen in tandem, inparallel, and this will continue to have shifts to how Saudi spends domestically,globally in the region as well with its regional allies.

There is a lot of challenges ahead of us, especially with sustainability, withthe transitions, with disruptive technologies.

We need to be ready.

 How do we maintain and continue tomaintain that leadership while also delivering the new energy that the worldwants?