Introduction

This study begins with an overview about the Saudi Aramco; it highlights the issue of the aging workforce within the internal structure of the firm in terms of implications, challenges and strategies.

Black gold nowadays reins the world and controls more than half of the world’s money flow taking under its authority all vital aspects of life such as finance, industry education and trade. Throughout the years, many companies and corporation took the initiative to undertake the industry of petroleum, putting into perspective that it is not exaggerating if it is said that when an oil pump stops working it costs a fortune.

Many companies grew, many collapsed, countries had been conquered others were brutally diminished for the sake of this black liquid, but based on an old saying ”survival for the fittest” few companies remained one of them is the worldwide known corporation in the field of oil industry Aramco (Cordesman and Obaid 2004).

Overview about Saudi Aramco

Saudi Aramco is an oil company owned by the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia. This company is internationally well-known due to its completely incorporated operations concerning extracting, draining and filtering oil such as crude oil and natural gas. In addition it is located in a strategic location compared to other oil companies throughout the world. Aramco controls the amount of 259 billion barrel of crude oil of world reserve.

Saudi Aramco pursues to make momentous investments in order to reign over and uphold 12 million barrels per day of sustainable capacity.

What makes Saudi Aramco a global company is the fact that it has 231 trillion standard cubic feet of gas reserves. Such fact makes Aramco the sole producer of the fourth of the average world production of gas per day in the amount of 6.9 billion standard cubic feet (Rasheed 2008).

The internal functional structure of the company holds up to 54,000 multinational employees. The headquarters of the company lies in the Eastern province of Saudi Arabia (Dhahran). Operational facilities stations are spread out through the kingdom for the sake of product distribution that connect all markets into one tunnel in addition to the terminals at the Arabian Gulf port for exporting issues.

Globally, Aramco holds interest of substantial joint venture in the process of refining and marketing in different countries such as China, USA, Philippines, and Republic of Korea. Europe, North America and the Far East are the places in which the services of key market support offices are located (Ahmed et, al, 2004).

For shipping oil to all customers, Aramco owns and operates a fleet of supertankers. In order to expand and spread the economy of the Kingdom, agreements have been signed by the Company with a Dutch company for exploration in order to refine and produce natural gas that is non-associated covering more than 200,000 square kilometers in Rub Al-kali accompanied by a project of $2 billion total cost (ibid, 2004).

About Saudi Aramco and the Rabigh Refinery

The operations of Saudi Aramco contribute largely in enhancing the industry of energy which endow it the leadership position in the production of crude oil, it operates and possesses a widespread network of facilities for both distribution and refining. In addition, Saudi Aramco holds the responsibilities for many functions such as processing of gas and installations of transportation fueling the industrial sector of the kingdom.

The refineries, which are cited across the Kingdome, constantly provide more than a million barrels of products per day in order to meet the Saudi and international markets needs. One of the refineries that Aramco operates is the Rabigh Refinery -160 kilometers of Jeddah- Such refinery has a facility of nearly 400,000 BPD crude oil. Tankers deliver crude oil through the port of Rabigh to Saudi Aramco. This refinery produces mainly fuel oil, jet fuel and naphtha. Liquefied petroleum gas (LPG) and oil are utilized as the refinery’s fuel (Kobayashi, 2007).

Aramco facts

Company Type: completely integrated international petroleum enterprise.

Operations: exploration, producing, refining, allocation, transporting and marketing.

The company occupies the leading role in terms of crude oil reserving and production with the capacity of producing unrelenting crude oil, it exports crude oil and natural gas liquids (NGL).

It is considered the owner of the world’s largest oil fields.

Safaniya’s oil field discoverer and producer, the largest abroad oil fields.

Occupies the fourth rank in gas reserves with the amount of 234.5 trillion cubic feet in 2003.

Occupies the eighth rank in terms of refining and filtering crude oil with the capacity of 3.4 million bpd.

Employees’ Number: 54.000, 85% of them enjoy the Saudi nationality.

Headquarters: Dhahran, Saudi Arabia.

Ownership: 100% by Saudi Government.

Occupies the first rank oil company in the world for 16 year in a row, according to Petroleum Intelligence Weekly OSPAS Project (Ahmed et, al, 2004).

Based on the above information, and by noticing the numbers mentioned, Aramco governs and rules over many levels of authorities, so there must be a huge number of challenges, problems and strategies to locate, address and solve. The aging workforce within the internal administrative structure raises the biggest issues for employers today. Middle age and older workers are increasingly becoming prevalent in the work place. The effect of an aging workforce is one of the main problems that face employers these days. In work places, older employees are becoming progressively widespread which insists in the absence of the young leaderships,

Every individual is affected by aging on many levels such as personal, social and organizational ones. Aging is shown through the changes that occur in performance psychologically, biologically, mentally and socially in the course of time. Aging is a process that starts with commencement and ends with passing away. The three orders of ageing are linked directly to sequential age which can be referred to biological age as the position of an individual that is related to his life length counted in days/months/years. However, th