“Saudi Arabia didn’t discover oil.
Oil discovered Saudi Arabia.”
— Ned Neuron, covered in crude and confidence
🧠 Featuring Ned Neuron, who once tried to nationalize his roommate’s Xbox.
I. Previously on “Oil Is Power”...
Remember last time?
Chevron (a.k.a. Standard Oil of California) pulled off a power move in 1933 —
renting Saudi Arabia’s sand and scoring an exclusive oil deal. (In case you blinked: here’s last week’s ridiculousness!)
Abdulaziz ibn Saud just sat there sipping tea like:
Guess what?
He wasn’t joking.
II. The American Oil Boys: Living Large in the Desert
Once oil blew up (literally) in 1938, the Americans built:
Shiny compounds
Private cinemas
Burger joints in the middle of the desert
And pipelines that made Fort Knox look poor
They created ARAMCO — Arabian American Oil Company — with all the flair of a Texan barbecue and none of the cultural awareness.
ARAMCO was like a gated community with oil rigs.
It had its own currency.
Its own airstrips.
Its own McFlurry machines probably.
And for a while, the Saudis were just watching…
III. Fast-Forward: Enter the Princes
By the 1950s–60s, Abdulaziz’s sons were on the throne.
And these guys?
They went to school in the West.
Wore suits and thobes.
Read Sun Tzu, The Quran, and BusinessWeek.
And they started asking:
Spoiler: That cut was very small.
ARAMCO was paying royalties, but calling the shots.
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IV. Time to Flip the Script
The Saudis started small:
Placing officials inside ARAMCO
Demanding transparency
Re-negotiating contracts
Then, in 1973, during the oil crisis, they made their big move:
By 1980, ARAMCO was fully Saudi-owned.
Rebranded as Saudi ARAMCO.
A.K.A. The richest company in the world.
V. Translation:
They let the Americans build the machine,
then bought the machine —
and charged rent.
It’s like letting your roommate build a gaming PC...
and then charging them $20 an hour to use it.
VI. Ned Neuron’s Notes:
ARAMCO’s American execs wore desert khakis. The Saudis wore chessboard robes and still won the game.
The oil fields didn’t move, but the power did.
The U.S. realized too late: they didn’t own the oil. They just bought time.
VII. Today: Saudi ARAMCO = Earth’s Money Printer
Let’s break it down:
ARAMCO made $161 billion in profit in 2022
That’s more than Google, Amazon, and Apple — combined
They fund megaprojects like NEOM, a sci-fi city where robots bring you hummus
And it all started with one dusty oil rig and a handshake in 1933.
💌 Help Us Grow Like ARAMCO
Send this to your nerdiest (and richest) friend.
If they own a gas station — even better.
We’re trying to build an empire too… one goofy history drop at a time (every Wednesday).
👉 Hit 'em with this.
Tell them the Saudis pulled the most gangster business takeover in modern history —
They flipped Chevron’s side hustle into a trillion-dollar empire.