Petromin: the slow death of statist oil development in Saudi Arabia

Steffen Hertog

LSE Research Online Documents on Economics from London School of Economics and Political Science, LSE Library

Abstract: The paper recounts the history of Saudi Arabia's first national oil company, Petromin, which was originally supposed to take the place of foreign-owned Aramco. As a result of Petromin's inefficiency and personal rivalries among the Saudi elite, however, Petromin was progressively relegated to the sidelines in favour of a gradually 'Saudiised' Aramco. As a result, the organisation of the Saudi oil sector today is very different from - and more efficient than - that of most other oil exporters in the developing world. The paper concludes with a tentative taxonomy of national oil companies, based on the circumstances of nationalisation.

Keywords: Saudi Arabia; Aramco; Petromin; national oil companies; political economy; oil; rentier state; Fahd; Yamani; industrialisation; nationalisation; state-building (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: N0 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2008-09
References: View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (4)

Published in Business History, September, 2008, 50(5), pp. 645-667. ISSN: 0007-6791

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