Still, the oil company was optimistic about the future: it maintained its $ 75 billion dividend during the year and the company expects it to return to pre-pandemic oil production levels by the end of 2021.
Saudi Arabia Aramco President and CEO Amin Nasser said in a call with reporters that he is very optimistic about 2021 and expects the company to reach about 99 million barrels a day by the end of the year. He said this perspective is based on the views of different global entities and agencies and predicted that demand will increase in 2022.
“The deployment of vaccines will make the situation much better,” he added.
“Because the huge impact of Covid-19 was felt throughout the global economy, we intensified our strong emphasis on operational and capital efficiency,” Nasser said.
The profit report comes at a time when Saudi Aramco refineries were facing drone attacks by Houthi rebels, backed by Iran, in Yemen.
“Our reliability in 2020 despite Covid-19 and these attacks on different parts of our facilities in the north and south and in Ras Tanura is recently 99.9%,” Nasser said. “It’s even higher than in previous years.”
It is an additional demonstration of the solid crisis management and continuity plans we have. “
– CNN’s John Defterios contributed to this report.