Aramco Asia invited Chinese customers and partners for the first Customer Reception in Beijing, January 10, 2024. Yasser Mufti, Aramco downstream executive vice president of products and customers, attended the event and delivered the opening speech.
The following is the full text of the speech:
Ladies and gentlemen, distinguished guests, wǎn shàng hǎo, and good evening.
It is a pleasure to be here in Beijing and to have the opportunity to host you at our inaugural End of Year Reception. I hope it will be the first of many.
Each year over the last three decades our relationship has flourished and 2023 was no exception. Against a backdrop of global uncertainty, we saw a year of great fraternity between the great nation of China and Aramco.
We are in full agreement with the view of His Excellency, President Xi, that both conventional energy and alternative sources of energy will need to work together for decades to come during the global energy transition.
As his principle of “building the new before discarding the old” deeply struck a chord with us.
We believe our strategy at Aramco can help to support both China’s energy security and carbon reduction goals during this transition.
We are reinforcing our oil production capacity while seeking to reduce the already low carbon intensity of our operations.
And we are steadily adding a range of lower carbon energy sources to our portfolio.
We know this strategy will bring results tomorrow, but we are also delivering for China today.
We have broken ground on a major new refinery in Panjin.
We have acquired a 10% interest in Rongsheng Petrochemical and recently, we announced further collaboration with Rongsheng.
We are working towards acquiring a similar stake in both Shandong Yulong Petrochemical and Shenghong Petrochemical, in addition, expanding our strategic partnership with Sinopec including the investments in China and Saudi Arabia.
In partnership with Baosteel we have agreed to produce lower carbon steel plates in Saudi Arabia.
And alongside both Geely and Renault we will help to develop lower carbon powertrains for vehicles.
Last but not least, 324 large tankers delivered 647 million barrels of oil to Chinese customers in 2023.
It means a tanker full of energy reaches China from Saudi Arabia almost every day.
By any measure, all this is a substantial effort on multiple fronts this year.
It illustrates the vast potential of our relationship.
One of these fronts is that of language and culture. In fact, I am fully committed to growing our program of sponsoring Saudi students here in China. Among these men and women are our future leaders who will bring Aramco even closer to China.
And we can all be very proud of how far we have come since the first shipment of Arabian crude arrived in China in 1991.
None of this would have been possible without you, so let me take this opportunity to say thank you, on behalf of Saudi Aramco.
I am confident that our supply of reliable, lower carbon products and commitment of our men and women will continue to meet your energy and chemicals needs for many more decades to come.
That, above all, is our unwavering priority.
Thank you again, and xiè xie.