Aramco Asia's CSR connects energy, opportunity and people

By Yuan Shenggao | China Daily | Updated: 2017-11-28 07:20

As a wholly owned affiliate of Saudi Aramco - the world's biggest oil producing company in the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia - Aramco Asia said it sees corporate social responsibility as a key strategy for its continuing growth in the Asia-Pacific region.

The group said its CSR endeavors have achieved fruitful results in China since it established Beijing headquarters in 2012.

The company has contributed a great deal to sustainable development and common prosperity by focusing on education, culture and arts, environmental protection and poverty alleviation.

A unified Asia-Pacific entity, Aramco Asia has established a presence in China, Japan, South Korea, Singapore and India. It provides marketing services for crude oil and liquefied petroleum gas sales and portfolio management for its mother company's downstream investment in Asia.

Nabil A. Al-Nuaim, president and CEO of Aramco Asia, shared his ideas with China Daily to highlight the company's CSR initiatives, synergy between the Saudi Vision 2030, the country's plan to reduce its dependence on oil and diversify its economy, and the Belt and Road Initiative proposed by China, and its business activities in China.

How do you interpret your CSR commitment and strategies?

As a global energy company, we strive to be a front-runner in CSR activities. Our long-term business policy is to focus on expanding our activities beyond energy operations, a continued commitment to contributing to the development and growth of regional prosperity, creating jobs, protecting the environment and building mutual respect between ourselves and people.

We are moving beyond philanthropy by finding new business opportunities and at the same time contributing to mitigating social challenges in China and other countries in the region.

We have made it our full responsibility to create innovative solutions in any society we operate in - not only through business-to-business interaction, but also through our outreach to communities and NGOs, to attract talent to our CSR projects in a highly systematic manner.

Thus, we released our corporate CSR strategy for the Asia-Pacific region at the end of 2015, to make sure our CSR initiatives in Asia-Pacific countries achieve the best outcomes.

We also understand that it is very important to align our CSR strategy with China's development agenda and contribute to its long-term objectives.

As China has been making steady progress to become a world powerhouse of scientific and technological innovation, and upholding the Paris Agreement on curbing climate change, we have focused our CSR endeavors to connect energy, opportunity and people through offering ambitious young talents the chance to do their best work and helping to safeguard environmental and social sustainability.

What are some examples of major CSR programs in China that Aramco Asia has carried out?

Aramco Asia works with various organizations, partners and stakeholders to fulfill CSR strategies in alignment with our CSR pillars of knowledge and the environment in the Asia-Pacific region.

We worked with business news portal Caixin to establish libraries for rural primary schools located in Hebei and Fujian provinces.

We have offered scholarships to students at Sun Yat-Sen University in Guangzhou and welcomed potential recruits in South China to join Aramco Asia.

We have also partnered with the China Development Research Foundation to support 10 kindergartens, each with a capacity of up to 25 children, for nutrition improvement and early childhood development in Gansu province.

Can you give us a brief introduction to the "Aramco Asia Cup" Xiamen University competition? Why did Aramco Asia support such an event?

This competition is one of our significant endeavors within the framework of Saudi Aramco's CSR and our China Donation Program 2017.

It was jointly launched by Aramco Asia, Xiamen University and China Daily to target over 40,000 undergraduate and postgraduate students in 27 faculties - for them to practice entrepreneurship and develop innovative projects tackling the issues of sustainable solutions for environmental protection, energy efficiency and climate change.

The program had two categories: Scientific Solution and Social Practice Investigation.

We were encouraged to see that 18 faculties participated and 69 proposed innovative projects were submitted for internal reviews by Xiamen University faculty advisors, and 10 project teams from each category were selected to compete in the final "Aramco Asia Cup" Xiamen University competition, which took place on Nov 25-26. This program is aligned with our regional CSR strategies and focuses on our CSR pillars of knowledge society and environment.

It is the third consecutive year that Aramco Asia has offered financial and technical support to benefit students.

I believe our partnership with Xiamen University has inspired and equipped students with the ability to make a better and environmental-friendly world in creative ways.

And in the future, these ideas can be transformed into sustainable solutions and provide long-term value for the local community.

These programs also contribute to China's long-term development plan to achieve sustainable growth by raising the younger generation's awareness of responsibility and taking actions to address critical environmental issues.

Can you elaborate on the synergy between the Saudi Vision 2030 and the Belt & Road Initiative?

In April 2016, the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia launched Vision 2030, setting the goal for the kingdom to be the heart of the Islamic and Arab world, to become a global investment powerhouse and to transform the country's strategic location into a global hub connecting the three continents of Asia, Europe and Africa.

The Belt and Road Initiative, which talks about connectivity, has opened up a multitude of opportunities for cooperation, both in the energy sector and in other industries.

There are significant synergies between the initiative and the Vision 2030, two frameworks that will guide the economic development of the two countries.

The Vision 2030 also aims to turn Saudi Arabia into a logistical and manufacturing hub. The kingdom is currently working on bringing Chinese investment to sectors such as transportation infrastructure and advanced manufacturing. These new areas of collaboration are underpinned by our traditional energy relationship, which will grow stronger under the B&R framework. The economic activity that will be unleashed by the B&R Initiative will require stable supplies of transportation fuels and chemicals products.

To what degree is the Chinese market important to Saudi Arabia? What kinds of chemical business activities has Aramco been doing in China? And how does Aramco plan to expand its business in the future?

China is now the world's biggest emerging economy, and it continues to exceed expectations and contribute to global economic stability with 6.8 percent GDP growth in the third quarter of 2017.

As China's reliable oil supplier, we realize the importance of the Chinese market and remain strongly committed to China's energy security and oil-related investments in the decades to come.

In 2016, Saudi Arabia's crude oil exports to China were in excess of 51 million metric tons.

The size of the Chinese market provides Aramco with a wide range of opportunities for collaboration and mutual value creation.

Aramco pledges concerted efforts to expand business engagement in the downstream business in China, as part of the company's commitment to promote regional economic growth and ensure energy security.

Remarkable progress has been made under Saudi Aramco's downstream strategy in strengthening the petrochemical business and boosting regional economic integration through partnerships with local stakeholders.

In Fujian province, we are the major shareholders in two key joint ventures in China: Fujian Refining & Petrochemical Co Ltd and Sinopec SenMei (Fujian) Petroleum Co.

Since 2013, from our Xiamen chemicals sales office, Aramco has been marketing around 400,000 tons of polyolefin per year to directly serve customers and distributors in Fujian, as well as the southeast and northern regions of China, in line with Saudi Aramco's strategy to become the global leader in refining and chemicals.

To further upgrade our downstream chemicals business, we also plan to build a chemicals hub in Xiamen to leverage the benefits from China's free trade zone initiative.

Aramco has interests in collaborating with State-own enterprises to expand our petrochemicals production footprint in China.

We are pursuing a partnership with China National Petroleum Corp in Yunnan province, to fuel the economic development of western China and to connect Yunnan with Southeast Asian countries.

We are also cooperating with China North Industries Corp and are conducting joint feasibility studies in refining, petrochemicals and retail projects in Liaoning province. Apart from the chemicals business, in support of the In-Kingdom Total Value Added Program, we organized a series of investment forums in Beijing and Shanghai to boost current and potential investments by Chinese companies in Saudi Arabia.