Saudi Arabia sits on approximately 20% of the planet's known oil reserves, and it is this oil that constitutes the bulk of the kingdom's natural-resource wealth. Saudi Arabia also possesses appreciable stores of copper, silver, phosphate, and several other resources.
With reported profits topping $111 billion in 2018, Saudi Aramco is believed to be the most-profitable company in the world.
The staggering net income of the state-owned oil company was higher than those of Apple, Amazon, and Alphabet combined.
Saudi Aramco has toyed with going public for years, but after the company attracted $100 billion in bids at its bond offering, an IPO appears to have been put on hold.
Though Saudi Arabia sits on what is believed to be the world's second-largest stores of oil, none was discovered there until 1938. In that year, prospectors working for California-based Standard Oil finally struck a reserve. The company would manage Saudi production until 1980, when the Saudi royal family took over operations. Today, oil production provides more than 90% of the nation's wealth.
Saudi Arabia has the 18th-largest annual GDP when compared to other nations. But when compared to the annual gross domestic product of US states, the Saudi economy is smaller in terms of overall annual dollars than the state of Pennsylvania's. In 2017, the kingdom had a GDP of around $683 billion, while Pennsylvania's was $752 billion. And Pennsylvania ranks sixth in terms of state GDP.
While often perceived as the most wealthy nation in the Middle East, Saudi Arabia is actually fourth in terms of per capita wealth, behind Qatar, Kuwait, and the United Arab Emirates. In Qatar, the average per capita income is $129,700 a year; in Saudi Arabia, it is $54,100.
In percent of annual GDP, only Oman outspends the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia in terms of military outlay. Saudi Arabia directs more than 10% of its annual budget to military expenditures, or some $69 billion each year. For perspective, the US spends about $610 billion on its military annually, but that makes up just 3.1% of America's GDP, according to the World Bank.
In 2017, the kingdom came in at No. 22 in terms of total dollar value of exports, shipping out some $231.3 billion worth of goods. It ranked just behind India, which produced $299.3 billion worth of exports that year, and just above Thailand, with $228.2 billion exported.
The Al Marai dairy farm in Saudi Arabia is the largest milk-producing dairy on the planet. Approximately 95,000 milking cows are kept there, and the dairy produces nearly 1 billion liters of milk each day.
According to data assembled by the World Bank, per capita income for an American was $59,160 in 2017. That same year, Saudi per capita income was $20,090, or 2.9 times lower than the US rate.
The Ghawar oil field in Saudi Arabia holds some 75 billion barrels of oil, which would be enough to fill more than 4,770,890 Olympic swimming pools. For reference, those pools hold 660,253 gallons of fluid when filled to regulation limits.
The Saudi oil and gas industries are dominated by foreign workers, with some 6 million foreign nationals employed in the kingdom. That means that on any given day, more than 15% of the people living in Saudi Arabia are foreign nationals.
Even as foreigners flock to the oil and gas fields and refineries of Saudi Arabia, its citizens are facing chronic employment shortfalls. In 2018, the unemployment rate hit 12.9%, with some 2 million Saudis out of work despite the nation's vast reserves of cash.
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