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Aramco Redefines Oil Power in $120 Billion U.S. Tech and LNG Alliance
The outcome of the visit of Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman to Washington, including his meeting with Trump and his entire entourage, has been successful, at least by media reporting. The impact of all is still to be seen, but from the start, MBS’s visit not just rebooted a strained political relationship. The primary outcome, based on all, is that it has reset the economic core of the US–Saudi partnership around Aramco. While the largest oil company in the world had already found its place in global power projections, Aramco has now become the principal vehicle for turning headline investment promises into hard assets, contracts, and code.
Though 2025 isn’t over yet, Aramco’s multibillion-dollar dealmaking spree with the United States has already reached staggering levels. In May 2025, the oil company had already unveiled 34 preliminary agreements with US companies worth up to $90 billion, encompassing a wide range of projects, including LNG, refinery upgrades, AI, advanced materials, and finance. The latter is now followed by another 17 MOUs, adding another $30 billion in potential projects, from LNG and manufacturing to services procurement. If you take both figures together, it shows clearly that the Saudi pledge to raise total investments is now anchored at around $1 trillion.
Analysts should understand that these levels of financial commitments are no longer just about crude exports and arms sales; the message has become different. It represents a multi-layered energy, technology, and supply-chain bargain that puts Aramco at the center, with geopolitics written into it in capitals.
For decades, Aramco’s main asset in the USA has been Motiva in Port Arthur, Texas. Its role is clear: Motiva has completed a debottlenecking that makes Port Arthur the largest refinery in the US, capable of processing about 654,000 bpd. Aramco indicated in May 2025 that it will invest another $3.4 billion to further integrate the refinery into a larger petrochemicals and fuels complex. The current moves made by Saudi Arabia and Aramco show, however, a sweeping change from crude oil to American-made supply chain products, as these downstream dollars sit alongside a sweeping web of MOUs with US industrial and service champions:
Oilfield and energy technology, as shown in its expanded cooperation with SLB, Baker Hughes, GE Vernova, and Honeywell, is linked to upgrading upstream efficiency and lowering emissions intensity.
Advanced materials and manufacturing, setting up deals with US companies to secure the supply of specialty metals, alloys, and components critical for refineries, gas plants, and new low-carbon projects.
At the same time, the Kingdom and Aramco have set their sights on access to US financial services and capital markets. Both are already showing results, as seen in the agreements with PIMCO, State Street, Wellington, and Wall Street banks, including BlackRock and Goldman Sachs. The main moves are to create dedicated vehicles, such as a “Fund of One,” to channel Saudi capital into US infrastructure and transition assets. The ‘Fund of One’ is a financial mechanism that enables Saudi Arabia to invest its capital directly in specific US projects, thereby supporting the US economy and safeguarding its long-term interests.While most are focusing on the synergies between US President Trump and his Saudi counterpart, Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman, the Kingdom’s underlying strategic moves are guided by the well-known Saudi Vision 2030. Riyadh uses all projects and arrangements to lock in technology, services, and financing, mainly meant for local Saudi Vision 2030 projects. At the same time, these moves are diversifying Aramco’s earnings away from pure upstream oil, showcasing the company’s adaptability. The Trump Administration, at the same time, wants to keep Saudi Arabia, one of the world’s most prominent investors and energy suppliers, deeply entangled in the US industrial base amid growing competition with China.
The most strategic moves are seen in the LNG sphere. The Saudi oil giant is pursuing a clear gas pivot, while the USA sees it as an export machine. This shift has significant geopolitical implications, as it not only changes the dynamics of the global gas trade but also impacts the energy security strategies of both Saudi Arabia and the USA. Again, geopolitics, economics, and strategy are merging. Natural gas is the most strategic part of all. Saudi Arabia’s leading revenue maker, Aramco, has slowly but steadily repositioned itself from an oil-only behemoth toward becoming a serious LNG player. US export capacity has been assessed and approved as one of its main springboards.
LNG markets have been woken up since April 2025 by Saudi moves, following the signing of a 20-year sale-and-purchase agreement by a subsidiary of Aramco with NextDecade. The latter SPA entails the delivery of 1.2 Mtpa of LNG from Train 4 of the Rio Grande project in Texas. According to current info, the project’s first phase is already under construction, with full build-out expected to cost around $18 billion. A year earlier, in June 2024, Aramco had already struck a heads-of-agreement with Sempra Infrastructure for 5 Mtpa of LNG offtake from the Port Arthur LNG Phase 2 expansion. The HOA also includes an option to take a 25 percent equity stake. Since May 2025, Aramco has been framing these commitments, 6.2 Mtpa initially, holding an ambition to reach 7.5 Mtpa by 2030. For the Saudis, these deals are seen as the backbone of a global gas portfolio that complements their oil exports.
On the geopolitical stage, these deals and strategies are doing three things:
They bind Saudi and US energy security together in gas, not just oil. It clearly positions Aramco as a long-term anchor buyer of US LNG, providing demand certainty for US projects, while giving Saudi Arabia flexible molecules it can redirect to Europe or Asia depending on price and politics.
They also balance competitors. Riyadh can now hedge its LNG expansion to US volumes, removing dependence on Qatar and Russia for gas.
Overall, it will extend Saudi influence along the complete oil-gas value chain. Riyadh can now also affect, in crisis scenarios, not only the crude market but also marginal LNG flows and arbitrage.
Trump is also looking at a significant win, as Saudi capital and contracts will support US LNG expansion. This will significantly enhance Washington’s power to lock in long-term influence over the global gas trade, a testament to the weight of these strategic moves.Another significant issue should also be addressed, linked to a combination of supply chains, critical minerals, and de-risking from China. Both parties have been very subtle in their moves to rewire supply chains away from Chinese dominance. Already at the broader US–Saudi Investment Forum, both parties have flagged agreements not only in energy but also in critical minerals and industrial inputs central to batteries, renewables, and advanced manufacturing. The goals of Aramco in this regard are clear; they want to secure long-term access to catalysts, metals, control systems, and specialized equipment that underpin both conventional and low-carbon projects. Washington’s goal is to ensure that a key Middle Eastern partner sources more of its strategic inputs from American or allied producers rather than from Chinese suppliers, as Trump seeks to counter or mitigate Beijing’s growing influence in the Kingdom. For both parties, it is a form of mutual de-risking. The need for supply-chain interdependence matters to both. While Washington wants to block China, Riyadh wants the option to arbitrage between US, European, and Asian suppliers. Current Aramco-led deals are effectively creating a new layer of sunk-cost interdependence. If in place, these will make a sharp political rupture more expensive for both capitals.
Overall, energy and AI are also explicitly fused into the relationship. Both countries have announced a US–Saudi AI Strategic Partnership aimed at making the Kingdom a “global AI leader.” Washington is reportedly considering approving the first sales of advanced AI chips to the Saudi venture Humain. The latter would open a controlled channel for high-end semiconductors into the Kingdom.
Again, Aramco plays a pivotal role in all of this. In recent months, Aramco has already announced partnerships with Nvidia for AI and robotics infrastructure, AWS for cloud and environmental digitalization, and Qualcomm for advanced industrial connectivity. The geopolitical cloud is very relevant, as AI will give Aramco an operational edge, especially by enabling it to model reservoirs more effectively, optimize production and trading, and monitor infrastructure for cyber and physical threats. Again, the Kingdom’s role as the world’s default swing producer and system stabilizer is at play. The Saudi-US tech stack will also serve as a counterweight to Chinese solutions from firms like Huawei. Washington will also gain export control leverage, as it retains the ability to tighten or loosen access to advanced chips and cloud services. This will increase US leverage on Saudi decision-making, this time outside of oil and gas. It is also part of a new systemology that complements or substitutes for traditional defense and arms sales tools. Aramco’s main AI goal is not only focused on efficiency but also on gaining access to US-centered digital ecosystems. Beijing, as the leading competitor, will certainly notice this new alignment.
International media have been discussing, especially, nuclear energy, defense, and security. Trump has clearly framed the broader package as a historic deepening of economic and defense ties, highlighting up to $1 trillion in prospective Saudi spending that spans nuclear energy, F-35 fighter jets, advanced chips, and energy investments. A Saudi-US civilian nuclear deal, worth several billions of dollars, was also signed after years of slow negotiations. Washington has clearly indicated that it wants Saudi nuclear and AI development to happen under American, not Beijing’s, umbrella.
Even though Aramco is not a defense company, all its deals cannot be separated from the security architecture surrounding them, including oil and gas security, infrastructure hardening, and gas as a strategic commodity. Reality is again that all of the latter amounts to a renewed oil-for-security bargain. The only change is that it has been set up in a much more complex form: crude plus LNG, plus AI and chips, backed by US naval power and advanced weapons.
Optimism is high, but….the proof is in the eating of the pudding, or maybe in this case, a bowl of Umm Ali. The MOUs will need to move from paper-based to hard assets. It is still to be seen how much of the $120 billion in Aramco MOUs will materialize into contracts, equity stakes, or shovel-ready projects. At the same time, will there be more or deeper US equity in Saudi projects? As Saudi Arabia opens more upstream and downstream assets to international capital – from gas fields to petrochemical complexes – US firms could seek larger equity stakes. Washington will push for this to balance the substantial positions held by Chinese and other Asian companies. Nuclear will be a long-term project; assessments will be needed. At the same time, all deals will be affected by political risk in both capitals.
On the sidelines of all, but not to be forgotten, GCC countries will be assessing the changes too. Qatar and the UAE will be reassessing their relative positions towards the USA and within their existing bilateral relations. Saudi Arabia will be seeking a more prominent position, perhaps at Qatar’s expense.
As stated before, the situation is in flux and moving to different levels. When looking at the US-Saudi relationship, current moves are not a nostalgic return to the 1970s oil-for-bases deal, but a 21st-century variant in which Aramco serves as the hinge between hydrocarbons, LNG, digital infrastructure, and security. Washington will use its LNG-AI-high-end manufacturing links to ensure that a critical Gulf power stays within the Western strategic orbit and helps underwrite Atlantic energy security in an era of great-power rivalry. Riyadh’s position is clear: by locking in US infrastructure, chips, capital, and naval protection, it buys not only insurance for its own diversification but also supports Aramco’s transition from a pure oil major to a broader energy-and-technology platform.
The coming months and years will depend on whether both sides can manage the inevitable frictions (human rights, regional wars, OPEC+ policy, or China) without lunging into a position of weaponizing the very interdependence they are now deepening. If successful, the Aramco-led wave of deals could mark the beginning of a more stable, if more complex, US–Saudi compact. In case of a significant failure, markets will need to understand that the same network of LNG contracts, AI clouds, and supply-chain ties will become the terrain on which the next phase of geopolitical competition is fought.
For current developments, a clearer option exists: the personal relationship between MBS and Trump, two transactional powers holding options to change a region. As long as both sides can prevent a Zelensky situation, positive results can be made.
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