Saudi, Inc.

by Ellen R Wald

Overview

The Saudi Royal family and Aramco leadership are, and almost always have been, motivated by ambitions of longterm strength and profit. They use Islamic laws, Wahhabi ideology, gender discrimination, and public beheadings to maintain stability and their own power. Underneath the thobes and abayas and behind the religious fanaticism and illiberalism lies a most sophisticated and ruthless enterprise. Today, that enterprise is poised to pull off the biggest IPO in history. Over more than a century, fed by ambition and oil wealth, al Saud has come from nothing to rule as absolute monarchs, a contrast with the world around them and modernity itself. The story starts with Saudi Arabia’s founder, Abdul Aziz, a lonely refugee embarking on a daring gambit to reconquer his family’s ancestral home—the mudwalled city of Riyadh. It takes readers almost to present day, when the multinational family business has made al Saud the wealthiest family in the world and on the cusp of a new transformation. Now al Saud and its family business, Aramco, are embarking on their most ambitious move: taking the company public.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781681777184
Publisher:	Pegasus Books
Publication date:	04/03/2018
Sold by:	SIMON & SCHUSTER
Format:	eBook
Pages:	368
Sales rank:	312,797
File size:	32 MB
Note:	This product may take a few minutes to download.

About the Author

Ellen R. Wald, Ph.D. is a widely cited consultant on geopolitics and the global energy industry. A frequent commentator on oil pricing, energy policy, alternative energies, OPEC, and political economy, she earned her doctorate in history at Boston University and an AB in history, Near Eastern Studies, and creative writing at Princeton University. She teaches Middle East history and policy and has appeared on TV and radio on three continents.

Table of Contents

Prologue: The Refugee Becomes King ix

Part I 1

1 "A Devil of a Time" 3

2 The Americans in King IBN Saud's Court 24

3 Actual Accrued Benefit 49

4 An Arabian Dawn 78

Part II 101

5 He Met His Duty 103

6 Putting the House in Order 120

7 Wahhabism, Women, Westerners, and Riyals 146

Part III 177

8 "Masters of Our Own Commodity" 179

9 "Nationalization Was Not the Thing At All" 202

10 "Barrels of Oil and Gigawatts of Power" 225

Epilogue: For Their Sons 253

Afterword: "The Hen That Lays Gulden Eggs" 267

Note on Sources 297

Notes 299

Acknowledgments 324

Index 327

Editorial Reviews

01/15/2018
Wald, an energy consultant, takes aim at the image of Saudi Arabia as a hidebound, oil-reliant monarchy, and here presents the kingdom as a canny and agile power player throughout the 20th century. Wald writes too little about royal-family corruption, a subject brought to the fore in 2017 by sweeping internal purges throughout Saudi Arabia, but she is superb on intraroyal machinations, such as the early 1960s power struggle that resulted in King Saud’s ouster by his brother Prince Faisal, and on U.S.-Saudi relations, including how King Fahd overcame clerical objections to the housing of American troops in his country during the first Iraq War. Concerning Aramco, the national oil company, Wald shows how Saudis “hired Westerners, learned from them, and eventually positioned to take over operations and build on its own.” She also reveals it was Aramco’s expansion into Asia and diversification, including into solar energy, that allowed it and the kingdom to survive the 2016 plunge in oil prices. Despite some occasional stylistic awkwardness—e.g., “It is not unreasonable to say that women in Saudi Arabia have not been treated equally to men”—Wald has produced a clear, concise history of both the kingdom and its all-important oil corporation. (Apr.)

Publishers Weekly

"Saudi, Inc. should be mandatory reading for anyone planning to do business in Saudi Arabia. Those of us who have spent years studying the Kingdom are often saddled with the dilemma of explaining its complexity. Ellen Wald has done a masterful job of taking you inside the boardrooms and the royal chambers, the competing interests and personalities. She captures the vast scope of history, from the conquest of King Abdul Aziz to the evolution of the business community over the past 80 years. Wald brings alive the interplay among the al Saud family, the tribes, the religious community and culture, and how they all contributed to the Kingdom’s development. Those who may think the Saudis were ill equipped to deal with the modern world are likely to walk away rethinking facile assumptions. Wald chronicles the skill in which the Saudis outmaneuvered everyone, especially the large U.S. corporate enterprises. A necessary read for all those venturing to the Gulf. "

Ambassador James B. Smith

"The U.S.–Saudi relationship is both critically important to both countries and fraught with contradictions. In this incisive and briskly readable study, Ellen Wald skillfully traces the evolution of that relationship from its earliest days down to the present. Saudi, Inc. is an important and timely book."

Andrew J. Bacevich

"I can highly recommend it. A really fascinating history of Saudi Aramco."

Tracy Alloway

"Well-written and well-researched, Wald’s book is crucial reading for understanding Saudi Arabia as this oil-rich kingdom finds itself in the forefront of fighting Iran’s attempts to control the Middle East and humiliate the US. A timely masterpiece. "

Steve Forbes

"An essential text for anyone who wants to understand the unique history of both Saudi Arabia and Saudi Aramco. Wald has done a tremendous job researching the history of the House of Saud and the evolution of Aramco and provides an in-depth analysis of the people and personalities involved."

Modern Trader

"A competent history of the Saudi Aramco and of how the House of Saud came to dominate the Arabian Peninsula in the 1920s. Its most original parts deal with the Saudi government’s “long game” to gain full control of Aramco while avoiding outright nationalization."

Foreign Affairs

An essential text for anyone who wants to understand the unique history of both Saudi Arabia and Saudi Aramco. Wald has done a tremendous job researching the history of the House of Saud and the evolution of Aramco and provides an in-depth analysis of the people and personalities involved.

Mordern Trader

2018-02-06
Tracing the conjoined realms of dynastic politics and international commerce in the history of Saudi Arabia.It was an Arab from the desert, Abdul Aziz, who led the struggle to unify the tribes of the Arabian Peninsula into the kingdom of al Saud, but what gave him the wherewithal to link the settlements of his new country were petrodollars, brought to the kingdom by an American concern called Aramco. Indeed, writes energy consultant and historian Wald, it was the vision of what the company built for its own workers—schools and hospitals and apartment blocks—that set Abdul Aziz on his modernizing path, which was undertaken with some reluctance since the king "felt more than a little uneasy at the pace at which his people's traditional lifestyle was changing." Later, the Saudi government would nationalize Aramco; in recent years, there have been proposals for a public offering, though whether for Saudi investors exclusively or a broader clientele remains to be seen. Wald shows how the al Saud rulers entered into another uneasy alliance—with religious fundamentalists—in order to legitimate and solidify their rule and spread it throughout Arabia. She rejects the thought that, despite the overwhelming Saudi presence among the 9/11 hijackers, the Saudi royals have much involvement with terrorism, which is bent on upsetting their power as much as waging jihad against the West. The author closes by hinting at reforms that she notes at the outset are beyond the scope of her discussion, reforms not just in the structure of Aramco and the company's approach to energy, but also in the larger Saudi society, evidenced by such things as greater investment in education and a diversified economy in which women fully participate.A solid overview of a nation much in world news and of economic trends that will have significant effects in the global marketplace in years to come.

Kirkus Reviews