The company has grown significantly. You know, we have grown a lot in gas. If you look at, we always talk about gas growth of more than 60% by 2030. So gas is bringing us a lot of growth opportunities. Looking at downstream, liquid to chemical, huge growth with our aspiration to have 4 million barrels of liquid to chemical over the next few years. And with that also today, if you look at how much we are on liquid chemical, almost 45% of that target of 4 million barrels of liquid to chemical. That is significant growth, as I'm sure you've seen through the tools and technology and digitalization and AI to maintain our low cost structure, extraction cost and development cost, and at the same time reduce our carbon footprint. We are accelerating our transition to net zero in scope one and scope two by 2050 by tapping into carbon capture and storage. One of the biggest projects globally with 9 million tonnes. So it is significant growth that you see capturing the opportunities that we see today. We always look at it long term. When we look at our investment, we don't focus on quarters or years, we look at decades in terms of investment. So it opened a lot of opportunities for the company to grow.
Did the IPO in 2019 influence the strategic direction of the company?
The company was always focused on long term in terms of its investment and building capabilities, as I see it, in gas and downstream liquid chemical and digitalization and transitions and renewables and new areas that we are looking at is minerals and all of these things. But the thing the IPO opened up for us is a lot of it allowed us to share our performance metrics with the outside, with the market today. Before, we were sharing all of the data, but we did bring a lot of third party to verify. Today, as a listed company, you are required to bring a third party to verify your data and emissions and in safety and in digital maturity and a lot of things. So we are proud of our performance. We have been always proud of our performance. The IPO opened the opportunity for us to share our data and information with the public as part of our performance.
The listing price was 32 riyals a share. Right now we're trading around 25. How do you interpret the current discounts versus the IPO price? This is almost six years on.
I would tend to look at the market. It goes through volatilities. In a low market, you will see an impact on share prices and all of it. And we have been through this cyclicality many times, so it's not an issue for us. So today, the downstream is a downside, especially chemicals, refining. Oil prices drop and that has an impact, always will have an impact on share prices. But this volatility is always, you know, short term and there will always be a growth. And you have to, when you look at it, let's look at it in a down cycle or in an up cycle. So we think cyclicality, we are used to it and we know how to. The most important thing is to continue to look at it in terms of a long term, in terms of our investment and capturing the opportunity that exists today where others will not do as much investment in a down cycle. For us, we always capture the opportunity because we look at things on decades, not quarters.
Yeah, let's talk about one of those investments and that's artificial intelligence. I've spent the last couple of days touring the various divisions and everywhere I've been, every single division I've spoken to have talked about how they've been incorporating technology into their end results and how it's been enhancing productivity. Would you say that AI has been a game changer for your operations?
Oh, it's transformative, definitely for any business, not only Saudi Aramco, which is important. You need to embed it, but you need to have the computing infrastructure to capture it. You need to have that we have 90 years of data quality, quality data available online because we have built that computing infrastructure over the 90 years history. We are benefiting from AI because we have the talents who are AI enabled, trained. They know what to do and how to capture opportunity. This is where you see a lot of the use cases delivering results for us. Technology realization in 2023 used to be $2 billion, is what we realized from technology. In 2024, $4 billion, and we're looking at $2 to $4 billion per year in technology to our benefit, benefiting from this technology application. AI is in everything embedded, not only in terms of allowing us to reduce our cost structure, more efficiency. It also helps us in reducing our carbon footprint. It is very important to enable, you see it reducing emissions, increasing productivity, and with that the number of wells, water reduction and with that emissions and less pumping in everything, it's embedded and we are looking at the benefits of AI, integrating it in everything that we are doing and how embedded it is.
Would you say the ultimate vision is to move away from being an oil company that deploys artificial intelligence to becoming a technology company that happens to produce oil?
Well, we think of ourselves as a technology company delivering energy, to be honest with you, because if you go around and you see everything, it's all about technology, AI, the computing infrastructure, the training. If you look at our talents, how many people trained right now? We have two AI specialists, a couple of hundred. But the AI enabled trained professionals are around more than 6,000. We are training more and more every year, and these are the subject matter experts in their fields. They're understanding, they can capture all the opportunities that exist in AI. A company can give you applications, can give you the hardware, that can give you the software, the chips, the GPU. But you need the subject matter experts that are trained and enabled in AI to create these use cases and capture all of these opportunities. And this is where we are seeing the value.
And what role do you see a more technologically advanced Aramco playing and benefiting broader society in Saudi Arabia?
Well, you know, one area is we are generating more value to our shareholders and maximizing the value. That is important for the majority shareholder, which is the government and the shareholders of Saudi Aramco. And that is important. But also in reducing, as I said, the carbon footprint, which is important in creating the future technology that allow us to reduce and create technology that will allow us to make that emission today. A lot of technologies that we are looking at now are good to reduce emissions, but they are not commercial because their cost is high. If I take you to one of the demonstration sites where they have captured, it's still, it's very expensive. It costs you more than $600 to $800 to produce a clean barrel, if you think about it, just to capture the carbon that emitted from one barrel and then sequestering it. But these type of technologies and other technologies in terms of better engines that are more efficient, it needs time and need a lot of these technologies that will make them more commercial. We are looking at a lot of technologies and renewables and battery storage that will help us in the future. So this is where we think we can add value. At the same time, something very important with AI and technology. I always say 20 years ago the CEO of Saudi Aramco, at that time they were asking him what is the cost for extraction, Saudi Aramco? And his answer was $3. Today, if you ask me what is the cost for extraction, it's still $3. This is with the maturity of the fields, with the increase in water production, with inflation, and all of it helped by what? By technology, digitalization, AI, all of these things capitalizing on them, and harnessing the talents that we have that are capable of capitalizing on these technologies.
President Trump was in Saudi Arabia in mid-May, and Aramco announced a series of agreements with US companies potentially worth up to $90 billion spanning various sectors. Can you tell us more about the importance of these partnerships?
You know, our relations with the US started since inception, 90 years ago, so we have great relations with all the companies. Now, some of our biggest companies that we are using today in servicing our plants and operation, project management. For example, if you look at procurements every year and services from the US, around $40 billion. So they have been here with us since inception, since the start of the company in 1933. And they have continued to be with us, helping us. For example, if you go to our gas or oil fields, you will see the Schlumberger, the Halliburton, the Baker Hughes. They are still there. They have been here for decades and they are still there supporting us and helping us in delivering energy to the world.
