Saudi Arabia plans to sell a stake “of less than 5 percent” in the parent of its state-owned oil company, the kingdom’s deputy crown prince said, revealing details of a listing that could make it the world’s biggest publicly traded firm.
In an interview in Riyadh, Prince Mohammed bin Salman said his advisers were working on a plan to offer shares in all of Saudi Arabian Oil Co. rather than just some of its refining subsidiaries.
Saudi Aramco, as the world’s biggest oil exporter is known, would be listed on the domestic stock exchange as early as 2017 and no later than 2018, said the prince, the king’s son and second in line to the throne.
“The mother company will be offered to the public as well as a number of its subsidiaries,” the prince, who heads Aramco’s supreme council, told Bloomberg in a five-hour conversation.
By committing to sell shares in the parent bin Salman will give investors a stake in the world’s biggest oil fields and expose the assets that underpin the kingdom’s entire economy to unprecedented scrutiny.
Aramco controls about 10 times the oil reserves held by Exxon Mobil Corp. and based on a conservative valuation of $10 a barrel, the company could be worth more than $2.5 trillion.
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