By Irina Slav

Saudi Aramco reported net profits of $104.7 billion for 2025, down by 12% on the year amid persistently low oil prices last year. The company also said it would buy back up to $3 billion over the next 18 months.

The company’s free cash flow at the end of 2025, however, was slightly higher than a year earlier, at $85.43 billion versus $85.33 billion at the end of 2024.

“Our disciplined capital allocation, combined with our lower-cost, adaptable, and highly reliable operations, drove strong financial performance in a year marked by price volatility,” Aramco’s chief executive, Amin Nasser, said in the release of Aramco’s financial results.

The executive noted “another year of record oil demand in 2025,” and said Aramco will continue pursuing an expansion in natural gas production, "aligning with rising domestic demand and delivering significant volumes of high-value associated liquids.”

This year was off to a strong start for the biggest oil producer in the Middle East as prices began to rebound. The current export disruption in the Strait of Hormuz, however, has forced OPEC’s number-one exporter to reroute its oil flows from the Persian Gulf to its west coast via a pipeline to load on tankers in the Red Sea.

The East-West pipeline can carry up to 7 million barrels of crude daily. However, the flow of oil via the pipeline has been much lower under normal circumstances, as most Saudi oil gets shipped from the Persian Gulf. The pipeline normally carries oil produced at Saudi Arabia’s eastern fields. Rerouting oil from other fields appears to be challenging, as is loading much greater volumes of oil at the port of Yanbu than usual.

“There are logistical trade-offs involved, including...what rate the Yanbu crude terminal on the Red Sea can sustainably load vessels at,” Energy Aspects co-founder Rochard Bronze told Reuters earlier this month.

By Irina Slav for Oilprice.com

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