Aramco Boosts Dividends, But it Can Ill-Afford to Do So

It is not surprising that profits in 2023 at Saudi Arabia’s flagship company Saudi Aramco were lower than in 2022. After all, the average price per barrel of the Brent crude oil benchmark dropped just over 18% over the year – from US$100.93 to US$82.49. The fact that Aramco’s profit drop was nearly 25%, rather than 18%, is also not that uprising, given standard operational variances over and above the straight drop in oil price. What may surprise many is that the company not only continues to pay a huge amount in dividends to…