Saudi oil frim Aramco on Sunday announced a record profit of $161.1bn (£134bn) for 2022, helped by soaring energy prices and bigger volumes.
It represents a 46.5% rise for the state-owned company, compared with last year, BBC reported.
It is the latest energy firm to report record profits, after energy prices spiked following Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine in February 2022.
America’s ExxonMobil made $55.7bn, and Britain’s Shell reported $39.9bn.
Aramco also declared a dividend of $19.5bn for the October to December quarter of 2022, to be paid in the first quarter of this year.
Most of that will go to the Saudi government, which owns nearly 95% of the shares in the company.
Brent crude oil, the benchmark oil price, now trades at around $82 a barrel – though prices exceeded $120 a barrel last March, after Russia’s invasion, and June.
“Aramco rode the wave of high energy prices in 2022,” said Robert Mogielnicki of the Arab Gulf States Institute in Washington. “It would have been difficult for Aramco not to perform strongly in 2022.”
In a statement on Sunday, Aramco said the company results were “underpinned by stronger crude oil prices, higher volumes sold and improved margins for refined products”.
Aramco’s president and CEO Amin Nasser said: “Given that we anticipate oil and gas will remain essential for the foreseeable future, the risks of underinvestment in our industry are real – including contributing to higher energy prices.”
To address those challenges, he said, the company would not only focus on expanding oil, gas and chemicals production – but also invest in new lower-carbon technologies.
Aramco – the world’s second-most valuable company only behind America’s Apple – is a major emitter of greenhouse gas emissions that contribute to climate change.
Responding to Aramco’s announcement, Amnesty International’s secretary general Agnès Callamard said: “It is shocking for a company to make a profit of more than $161bn in a single year through the sale of fossil fuel – the single largest driver of the climate crisis.”