Saudi Aramco promotes upstream, downstream heads to new president roles

Saudi Arabia’s state oil producer promoted the heads of its upstream and downstream businesses, which manage crude and natural gas production and fuel processing, to the newly created positions of president.

Nassir Al-Naimi remains in charge of oil and gas production, while Mohammed Al Qahtani will continue to run the refining and chemicals parts of the company, Saudi Aramco said in a statement. The officials — who were previously executive vice presidents — will continue reporting directly to Aramco’s CEO and company president Amin Nasser.

Al-Naimi leads Aramco’s plan to expand oil production capacity to 13 million barrels a day by 2027 from 12 million now and to maintain daily output that accounts for about a tenth of global supply.

Al Qahtani is in charge of bolstering Aramco’s position as one of the world’s biggest refiners, including completing new plants at home and seeing through partnership deals announced with China this year.

Saudi Aramco org structure

Aramco has traditionally picked its next CEOs from among its roster of executive vice presidents. Nasser, who has not made any announcements about possible retirement, headed the company’s oil production business before taking the top role at the world’s biggest crude exporter eight years ago. Aramco has six executive vice presidents covering roles such as finance, technical services, strategy and technology.

Nasser helped lead Aramco’s 2019 stock listing, the world’s biggest and guided the company through the coronavirus pandemic, which saw oil demand crushed and crude prices briefly drop below zero.

Saudi Arabia, the de facto leader of the Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries, is moving ahead with plans for another multibillion-dollar offering of stock, Bloomberg reported this week, citing people with knowledge of the matter.

Read: Saudi Aramco Q1 profit drops to $31.9bn on lower oil prices