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Eni profit falls due to dip in oil prices

Q2 net profit fell by 18% to $637 million.

Emirates NBD H1 profit $3.40bn

Total income rose by 12 percent in the same period.

ADIB H1 pre-tax profit $1.08bn

Q2 pre-tax net profit increases by 14 percent.

AstraZeneca to invest $50bn in US

Bulk of funds to go into a Virginia manufacturing center.

UAB net profit up by 50% for H1

Total assets increase by 11 percent.

Oil propels Saudi GDP growth to near 10 percent in first quarter

Rigs belonging to Aramco, Saudi Arabia's state-owned oil and gas company, north of Dhahran in Saudi Arabia. (AFP)
  • Growth in the oil sector reached 20.4 percent year-on-year in the first quarter, while the non-oil sector expanded 3.7 percent year-on-year, Saudi statistics authority said.
  • The Ukraine war and the resulting rise in crude prices has been a boon to oil-producing states like Saudi Arabia, whose GDP is expected to grow by 7.6 percent in 2022.

Saudi Arabia reported its fastest economic growth rate in a decade Sunday, as a booming oil sector fueled a 9.6 percent rise in the first quarter over the same period of 2021.

The preliminary results come after the world’s biggest oil exporter resisted US entreaties to raise output in an attempt to rein in prices that have spiked since the Ukraine war began.

“Oil activities led the real Gross Domestic Product (GDP) of Saudi Arabia to achieve the highest growth rate in [the] last 10 years,” the Saudi statistics authority said in initial estimates published online.

Growth in the oil sector reached 20.4 percent year-on-year in the first quarter, while the non-oil sector expanded 3.7 percent year-on-year, it said.

The agency noted that data for the quarter was “still incomplete” and could be revised.

The Ukraine war and the resulting rise in crude prices has been a boon to oil-producing states like Saudi Arabia, whose GDP is expected to grow by 7.6 percent in 2022, the International Monetary Fund said last week.

As the war in Ukraine got underway, Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates stressed their commitment to the OPEC+ oil alliance, which Riyadh and Moscow lead, underscoring Riyadh’s and Abu Dhabi’s increasing independence from long-standing ally Washington.

Last month, ratings agency Fitch predicted that the kingdom would record a budget surplus in 2022 for the first time since 2013.

But Fitch noted that, despite efforts to diversify the economy, Saudi Arabia’s oil dependence “remains high”, accounting for more than 60 percent of total budget revenues.