In challenging year, our Aramco family became closer

Dear colleagues, 

As we look forward to 2021, I want to thank you for your hard work and sacrifice, in a year in which we all had to discover new sources of resilience.  

It has been undeniably tough. We’ve missed our families and each other. We’ve had to become more flexible as a company. Yet this virus could not and will not stop us, just as drones and missiles couldn’t stop us. The Aramco spirit is too strong and our work is too important. 

All of us should be proud of what we accomplished in 2020. Our healthcare workers on the frontline had to face a new and invisible enemy. You did so with courage and calm professionalism. The majority of our colleagues, working in the field, had to keep supplying energy to billions of people around the world. So you adapted, keeping production going and even achieving record output in April without compromising on safety. I have heard many moving stories of colleagues in plants, fields, and offshore platforms, volunteering not to go home, so they didn’t risk bringing the virus back to work. 

In this most testing of years, the Aramco family became closer as one team. We can be proud too that despite the ongoing challenge and uncertainty caused by the COVID-19 pandemic, none of us gave up on the idea of a better future last year.

We embraced our new responsibilities as a publicly traded company, and welcomed SABIC into the Aramco family, a huge step towards our goal of building a world-class chemicals business.  

Potential became proof in vital growth areas as we widened the use of nonmetallic materials across our operations, and advanced our flagship crude to chemicals technology. We delivered the world’s first shipment of blue ammonia, demonstrating one of the many solutions needed to combat climate change. We delivered for our communities too, with a rich program of online events at Ithra and a generous voluntary effort to help those most affected by the pandemic, both in-Kingdom and globally through our overseas colleagues. 

But if 2020 was a test of our endurance, I believe this coming year will be a test of our agility: our capacity to adapt and thrive in response to rapidly changing circumstances.  

Being agile means continuing to diversify, developing our chemicals business while ensuring that we remain the most reliable and efficient major energy producer in the world. 

It means driving forward the sustainability agenda, backing the most promising energy technologies while demonstrating to our shareholders, customers and society that we are central to global economic development. 

It means continuing to be flexible, because the last few years have taught us that we cannot predict the future but we can plan, prepare and train for whatever it has to throw at us. 

It means valuing your performance as employees and prioritizing your wellbeing, recognizing that both go hand in hand. 

And it means taking pride in our purpose as a company: to supply the energy that moves the world, energy that even now is helping in the manufacture and distribution of vaccines at a global scale. 
 
There are good reasons for hope as we start the new year, as the Kingdom has now embarked on the biggest vaccination program in its history. Some employees, including me, have already taken the vaccine, and I can report that the process is smooth and professional. I strongly encourage all of you to download the Sehaty app and register.

In a post-COVID future, when borders reopen, families reunite and economies start to recover, our purpose will shine through like never before. So let me thank you in advance for the contribution each one of you will make to the global recovery, and let me wish you and your families a happy, safe, and healthy new year. 

Amin Nasser,

president and CEO