No longer simply a handbook for Aramco employees, this volume provides background information on Islam, the Arab world, and the oil industry.

The extraordinary memoir of global oil's former central banker Ali Al-Naimi is the former Saudi oil minister - and OPEC kingpin - a position he held for the two decades between August 1995 and May 2016. In this time, Al-Naimi's briefest utterances moved markets. But it wasn't always that way. Al-Naimi was born into abject poverty as a nomadic Bedouin in the 1930s, just as US companies were discovering vast quantities of oil under the baking Arabian deserts. From his first job as a shepherd boy, aged four, to his appointment to one of the most powerful political and economic jobs in the world, Out of the Desert charts Al-Naimi's extraordinary rise to power. Described by Alan Greenspan as 'the most powerful man you've never heard of', Al-Naimi's incredible journey proves that anyone can make it - even a poor Bedouin shepherd boy. This is his exclusive inside story of power, politics and oil. His Excellency Ali Ibrahim Al-Naimi is the former Minister of Petroleum and Mineral Resources for the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia. One of the most powerful economic and political jobs in the world, he held this post from August 1995 to May 2016. Prior to that he held a wide range of leadership positions in the Kingdom's national oil company, Saudi Aramco. He was the first Saudi national to be named President of the company in 1984 and became the first Saudi CEO in 1988. Al-Naimi joined the company, then called Aramco, as an office boy in 1947. A Bedouin, he was born in the deserts of eastern Arabia in 1935.

Now newly updated, America's Kingdom debunks the many myths that now surround the United States's special relationship with Saudi Arabia, also known as "the deal": oil for security. Exploding the long-established myth that the Arabian American Oil Company, Aramco, made miracles happen in the desert, Robert Vitalis shows how oil led the US government to follow the company to the kingdom, and how oil and Aramco quickly became America's largest single overseas private enterprise. From the establishment in the 1930s of a Jim Crow system in the Dhahran oil camps, to the consolidation of America's Kingdom under the House of Fahd, the royal faction that still rules today, this is a meticulously researched account of Aramco as a microcosm of the colonial order.

This book discusses the strategic shift in ownership of Aramco, the Saudi Arabian Oil Company, and its potential impact on Aramco's role in a post- privatized world. Scheduled to become an IPO in 2018, Aramco is on the verge of becoming the largest IPO on the market. As the world’s largest oil and gas company, Aramco’s impending privatization has important implications for the world’s petroleum market. This book, therefore, undertakes an analysis of Aramco, examining its history, its current role in Saudi Arabia’s economy, and its future role as an IPO. The chapters highlight the likely outcomes for Aramco in proceeding with its planned IPO and privatization, as well as the various policy options and models available to it by drawing on the privatization of other national oil companies in Norway , Russia, Brazil, and China. The book also explores the complexities that will be involved in transforming Saudi Aramco to a privatized company—albeit with significant government oversight and control—and addresses key questions on the issues likely to be faced, such as IPO pricing, the listing, domain, and market capacity, and potential stakeholders. As such, this book will be of interest to academic researchers studying energy economics, energy policy, and the political economy of the Middle East, as well as private sector decision makers in energy related fields, international organizations, international oil companies, energy commodity traders, and public sector energy policy makers with interest in Saudi Arabia and Aramco’s IPO.