The United States and Saudi Arabia signed an economic partnership agreement and a number of energy deals between Saudi oil giant Aramco and American companies during the visit of U.S. President Donald Trump to the Kingdom on Tuesday.
President Trump signed the economic cooperation agreement with Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman, and co-chaired the Saudi–U.S. Investment Forum 2025 in Riyadh.
During the forum, Amin Nasser, the chief executive of Aramco, said that the Saudi state giant is signing today a $3.4-billion agreement to expand the Motiva refinery in Texas to integrate chemicals production.
Motiva Enterprises, controlled by Saudi Aramco, operates the huge Motiva refinery in Port Arthur, Texas. The refinery is the second largest in the United States by operable capacity, after Marathon Petroleum’s 631,000-bpd refinery at Galveston Bay, Texas, according to data from the U.S. Energy Information Administration as of January 1, 2024.
Currently, the Motiva refinery produces conventional gasoline, commercial aviation fuel, ultra low sulfur diesel, export (high cetane) diesel, and Texas low emissions diesel.
Aramco is also signing on Tuesday agreements with U.S. companies NextDecade and Sempra, Nasser said at the forum.
“The US is really a good place to put our investment,” Nasser noted.
Aramco is signing a memorandum of understanding with Sempra to receive about 6.2 million tons per year of LNG, the executive added.
Last year, Aramco signed a non-binding agreement to buy LNG from Sempra’s Port Arthur LNG project and potentially acquire 25% in the project’s Phase 2. Under the non-binding Heads of Agreement (HoA), Aramco and Sempra discussed a 20-year sale and purchase agreement for LNG offtake of 5.0 million tonnes per annum (Mtpa) from the Port Arthur LNG Phase 2 expansion project.
The Saudi-U.S. investment forum was also attended by Larry Fink, the CEO of BlackRock, the world’s biggest asset manager, and Elon Musk, among other prominent U.S. entrepreneurs.
By Charles Kennedy for Oilprice.com
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