Part 1 of 2 – CBS News correspondent Lesley Stahl and the 60 minutes crew provide a look inside Saudi Aramco, the world’s most profitable company and its largest oil supplier – by far. It is incumbent on any good nuclear proponent to understand as much as possible about the overall market in which our favorite technology competes. The below embedded video provides a unique view of the massive investments being made in Saudi Arabia in new fields.
One thing that a good analyst will notice is that the oil minister’s statement about the production cost for Saudi oil is that it does not match the numbers provided for the NEW production fields. He claims a production cost of $2-3 per barrel, yet the new fields being brought on line for a total of $60 Billion in initial capital investment will produce about 2 million barrels per day. At $3 per barrel, 2 million barrels per day would only provide 2.2 billion per year in revenue, which would indicate an ROI of less than 4% without even considering the operating costs for massive industrial facilities located hundreds of miles out in the desert sand.
