Saudi Arabia\u2019s King Salman replaced the country\u2019s energy minister with one of his own sons Sunday, naming Prince Abdulaziz bin Salman to one of the most important positions in the country as oil prices remain stubbornly below what is needed to keep up with government spending.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
The new energy minister is an older half brother to 34-year-old Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman and an experienced oil industry figure in Saudi Arabia. He has been minister of state for energy affairs since 2017, but the brothers are not known to be close.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Al-Falih\u2019s diminishing role had led to reports that he was out of favor with the crown prince, who is pushing to diversify the Saudi economy away from its dependence on oil revenue for survival.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
A key part of the crown prince\u2019s plan is to sell shares in Aramco, as much as 5%, by 2020 or 2021. Aramco\u2019s new board chairman, who replaced al-Falih, is the finance-minded Yasir al-Rumayyan, who heads the Public Investment Fund, the country\u2019s sovereign wealth fund. Al-Rumayyan is also a close adviser to the crown prince.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Prince Abdulaziz replaces Khalid al-Falih, who had been removed just days ago as board chairman of the state-owned oil giant Aramco, a company that he once ran as CEO. Al-Falih had also seen his Cabinet portfolio diminished recently when mining and industry were removed from his purview and spun off into a new ministry.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Higher oil prices not only help Saudi Arabia balance its budget, but also directly affect Aramco\u2019s overall valuation as it heads toward a potential listing.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Al-Falih, who had been energy minister since 2016, was tasked with playing a key role in the prince\u2019s economic overhaul of the country. He expressed concern in January at an energy forum in Abu Dhabi over the \u201crange of volatility\u201d in oil prices seen over the past two to three years.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
To keep oil prices from sliding even further, he led Saudi Arabia\u2019s curb on production in OPEC and the oil cartel\u2019s agreement with other major oil producers, like Russia, to cut production in past years. The major oil producers have agreed to curb production this year by 1.2 million barrels a day, with Saudi Arabia as the kingpin of OPEC shouldering much of the bulk of the cartel\u2019s cuts.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Still, Saudi Arabia\u2019s diversification efforts have struggled to take off as government spending reaches an all-time of $295 billion this year.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Saudi Arabia\u2019s King Salman replaced the country\u2019s energy minister with one of his own sons Sunday, naming Prince Abdulaziz bin Salman to one of the most important positions in the country as oil prices remain stubbornly below what is needed to keep up with government spending. The new energy minister is an older half brother […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":69957,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"inline_featured_image":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[87],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-69956","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-world"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blastingskyhawk.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/69956","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blastingskyhawk.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blastingskyhawk.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blastingskyhawk.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blastingskyhawk.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=69956"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/blastingskyhawk.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/69956\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":69958,"href":"https:\/\/blastingskyhawk.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/69956\/revisions\/69958"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blastingskyhawk.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/69957"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blastingskyhawk.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=69956"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blastingskyhawk.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=69956"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blastingskyhawk.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=69956"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}