US: Saudi Aramco chief named to board of BlackRock investment firm
BlackRock announced Monday that the chief executive officer of Saudi Aramco would join the board of the world’s largest asset management company.
The appointment of Amin Nasser to BlackRock’s board underscores how western companies are continuing to court Saudi Arabia with an eye towards economic opportunities, despite oil prices falling about 40 percent from their highs after Russia’s invasion of Ukraine.
Nasser has been at the helm of the state oil company since 2015 and oversaw its public listing in 2019. The company - currently the world's second most valuable after Apple - posted profits in 2022 of $161.1bn.
BlackRock in the past has trumpeted its position on environmental, social and corporate governance and sells "sustainable" investment funds. Nasser, however, has criticised energy transition goals.
"We need to realise that today alternatives are not ready to shoulder a heavy load of the growing energy demand and therefore we need to work in parallel until alternatives are ready,” he said previously.
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For years, Gulf monarchies had to cope with low energy prices that threatened their state budgets and sidelined them from climate talks. Although energy prices have fallen recently, they are still high by historic standards, and Gulf leaders feel they are in the driver's seat as the energy industry faces underinvestment and western efforts to find alternatives to Russian gas.
Middle East Eye previously reported how Gulf states felt empowered at last year’s UN climate conference, Cop27, at the Egyptian resort of Sharm el-Sheikh. They are set to dominate the agenda at Cop28 when it's held in the UAE, an Opec member state and major energy producer, later this year.
Rights groups, western lawmakers and climate activists have all criticised the decision for the UAE to host the event. Some have called for Emirati executive Sultan al-Jaber to be removed as head of the conference.
'Shackled energy security'
But Gulf states have shown no willingness to back down and have become more outspoken against the global push for renewables.
Saudi Arabia's energy minister, Abdulaziz bin Salman, famously vowed that the kingdom would be "the last man standing" in the oil market and extract "every molecule of hydrocarbon" it possesses before they become worthless.
Speaking at the Qatar Economic Forum in Doha in May, he said that energy security was being “shackled” by western states' unwillingness to invest in oil and gas.
"People go around talking about blue, green, purple, pink hydrogen, but in the final analysis, who is going to be the off-taker?" he said, questioning if there was a practical buyer for clean energy.
Qatar's energy minister, Saad al-Kaabi, took an even darker line, warning Europe that the "worst is yet to come" for its oil and gas shortages and that a warm winter had lulled them into a false sense of security as it looks to cut off purchases of Russian energy and transition to cleaner fuels.
"The only thing that saved humanity and Europe this year was a warm winter, and the slowdown in the economy,” he said.
'Crown jewel of the kingdom'
Nasser’s appointment comes as Saudi Arabia itself remerges on the world stage after being criticised in the West over its poor human rights record.
US President Joe Biden visited the kingdom last year after vowing to make it a “pariah” for the killing of Middle East Eye and Washington Post journalist Jamal Khashoggi. Meanwhile, French President Emmanuel Macron hosted Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman on a state visit last month.
Nasser joins BlackRock’s board just as Aramco weighs a fresh stock offering that could allow it to tap billions of dollars and prove lucrative for western bankers and financiers involved in the deal.
In its initial public offering (IPO) in 2019, Saudi Aramco raised a record $25.6bn. The stock sale was a central feature of Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman’s attempts to diversify the kingdom’s economy away from a reliance on oil.
“Saudi Aramco is very much the crown jewel of the kingdom,” Jim Krane, an energy expert and fellow at Rice University's Baker Institute, told Middle East Eye previously.
More recently, Saudi Arabia has been focused on pushing fellow oil producers to enact production cuts in a bid to support prices. The kingdom, historically the world’s biggest crude exporter, has been bearing the brunt of cuts. Last week, the International Energy Agency said Saudi Arabia was set to lose its spot as the largest oil producer in the energy cartel Opec+ to Russia.
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