Welcome to Saudi Aramco's third quarter 2026 results call. We will be holding a question-and-answer session following the presentation. If you would like to ask a question, please press star followed by one on your telephone keypad at any time. I shall now hand over to Mr. Peter Hutton to begin.
Hello, and welcome to Aramco's third quarter 2026 earnings call. I'm Peter Hutton, Head of Investor Relations, and I'm pleased to be joined today by Amin Nasser, President and CEO, and Ziad Al-Murshed, Executive Vice President and CFO. Today, we will provide a detailed update followed by a question-and-answer session. We expect the call to last around an hour. Please refer to this cautionary statement on forward-looking information, our regulatory filings, and our website for more details. With that, I'll hand the call over to Amin.
Thank you, Peter. Welcome, everyone, and thank you for joining us. In the third quarter, despite the ongoing disruptions to regional trade flows, we continued to deliver strong results. Our resolve and resilience to overcome these challenges is a testament to the Aramco way, where we have continued to deliver for our customers and all our stakeholders. We have maximized exports through multiple routes, safely accelerated asset restoration, and optimized operations across our integrated business, all while delivering on our projects and keeping our growth strategy on track.
I want to thank our employees, contractors, and partners for their dedication, professionalism, and adaptability during these uncertain times. The regional conflict has caused the biggest supply shock in our industry, creating unprecedented volatility and disruption. Throughout this period and through our advanced planning, we have clearly demonstrated the true meaning of resilience, driven by several key elements: the foresight of long-term planning almost five decades ago with the East-West Pipeline, extensive multiple scenario planning, robust production and export infrastructure supported by high engineering standards, our world-class workforce, a localized supply chain, and technological innovation.
Throughout this crisis, we have maintained our resolve, delivering complex world-scale projects on stream safely and on track in all business areas. This includes the Zuluf increment, which started as expected with up to 600,000 bpd of expected additional capacity by the end of this year, as well as key liquids-to-chemicals projects both domestically and internationally. These actions enabled us to deliver strong operational and financial results, with liquids production up 15% on last quarter, with stronger export volumes utilizing different export routes and implementing new ways of delivering to our customers.
This has value for us and our shareholders, with third-quarter adjusted net income of $31.2 billion, up 9% year-over-year, and relatively stable quarter-over-quarter. Upstream delivered steady results, reflecting continued strong prices, though lower than last quarter, while our Downstream adjusted EBIT was up over $4 billion from last quarter, as our focus on availability captured high refining margins. Our actions also added value across a wider section of the global supply chain, helping to supply much-needed volume to the global market and mitigate what otherwise might have resulted in a much more severe impact.
We are actively working to further develop the flexibility and optionality we offer to our customers, including via pipelines and storage capacity, and the value this could provide also needs to be recognized. Despite the disruptions, we maintain capital discipline, keeping our full-year 2026 capital investment guidance at $50 billion-$55 billion. Importantly, this guidance now includes not only asset restoration costs, but also our $2.6 billion cash investment in HUMAIN. The quality of our result is shown by our return on average capital employed, which was 22.1% in Q3.
One thing is absolutely clear, that geopolitical events in the region reinforce the critical role of the region's oil and gas in the global economy. Supply has become indispensable, and while demand remains strong, we can ramp up production rapidly. We are able to return to pre-conflict level in a matter of days and reach our 12 million bpd maximum sustainable capacity in under three weeks. This positions us to capture significant financial upside. Now turning to the broader market context. Since disruptions began, the global market has lost over 3 billion barrels of liquid supply. Alternative flows, including export via our East-West Pipeline and strategic petroleum reserve releases, have narrowed the cumulative deficit to around 2 billion barrels.
The remaining gap was balanced by demand management and substantial withdrawal from commercial inventories. While these actions have bought time, they are not a permanent solution. The resulting market tightness is increasingly evident in physical prices. Buyers competing for immediately available barrels have driven physical prices above futures, and strong demand with constrained supplies has pushed refining margins to record levels. Looking ahead, the market faces additional pressure from both seasonal and structural demand. Global product stocks are now alarmingly low, particularly for diesel, and with diesel demand expected to increase further in Q4, the market faces further pressure heading into winter.
In 2027, global liquid demand is projected to expand by around 2 .4 MMbpd as demand management measures ease. Beyond meeting additional demand, the market also faces the challenges of replenishing depleted inventories. More oil will be needed to rebuild inventories and fill additional storage capacity, a process which could take up to two years. The challenges we have faced throughout this conflict have been considerable, and we have successfully navigated them with our optionality, speed, flexibility, and operational excellence.
Our highly connected response center enables seamless coordination between our management teams and our multidisciplinary dedicated rapid assessment teams, allowing us to deal swiftly with events. This resilience is further strengthened by Aramco's focused approach with the development of a local supply chain, working together with our partners. This allows critical equipment and materials to be procured quickly or redirected to priority assets and projects as necessary to continue operating safely and reliably throughout the period.
The same foresight underpinned our ability to restore operations quickly. Our teams use inspection drones to assess damage in real time so that repairs can commence as soon as it is safe. More than 90% of the material used to restore operations have been sourced here in the kingdom. Independent benchmarking shows that we can carry out emergency repair approximately six times faster than the benchmark, and we are working to move more through our existing routes and infrastructure, as well as assessing alternative routes.
Preliminary engineering is underway for an expansion of the East-West Pipeline. We are also looking at increasing crude storage capacity in key demand centers and export routes. This long-term approach to investing to create value is demonstrated by our East-West Pipeline, where our entire construction costs were recovered in around 15 days during the current disruptions to regional trade flows. Aramco has been at the forefront of world-class technology in the energy sector for decades.
Our investment in HUMAIN represents a transformational shift that builds on our competitive advantage and accelerates value creation through AI. Aramco has taken 49% share in HUMAIN and invested around $2.6 billion in cash contributions, together with the transfer of key AI assets this year. Aramco brings world-class technology infrastructure, 90+ years of operational experience, and low-cost, lower-carbon energy to meet growing AI power demand. This aims to create new high-margin revenue streams, support growth, and strengthen our resilience.
HUMAIN offers a full-stack AI platform covering data centers, cloud systems, models, and live applications. It aims to generate 3 GW of AI data center capacity by 2030 to serve domestic and international demand, with plans to become a leading global AI exporter. With that, let me hand over to Ziad to take you through our financial performance in detail.
Thank you, Amin, and welcome, everyone. Amin explained the drivers of our operational performance. I will explain how that operational performance translated into resilient Upstream results and record Downstream earnings. We have previously talked about the strength of our integrated model, and our Q3 results clearly demonstrate the value of that integration. Despite disruptions to our operations, our Q3 results were strong, with Q3 adjusted net income of $31.2 billion, up 9% year- on- year, and broadly stable against the second quarter.
Upstream adjusted EBIT was $46.8 billion, down 9% year- on- year, mainly due to lower volumes. Q3 production reached 11 MMboe/d . Compared to last quarter, volumes were up 17%, partially compensating for lower realized prices, which averaged $95/ bbl in Q3. By placing 51% of our crude oil, our integrated and flexible Downstream portfolio was able to capture additional value from high refining margins and achieved a record adjusted EBIT of $10.3 billion, up 234% year-on-year.
That reflects not only the focus on availability to capture margins, but also structural efficiencies and strong performance in refining and base oils. This was more than $4 billion higher than in Q2 and contributed significantly to the resilience in our results. Q3 group free cash flow was also strong at $28.2 billion. Our balance sheet further strengthened with gearing falling to 5.5%, and the quality of our results is demonstrated by our 12-month rolling return on average capital employed of 22.1%.
Drilling down into Q3 in more detail, our results show how we turned the resilience Amin talked about into our advantage, delivering value despite volatility and disruption. In Upstream, we increased volumes quarter-on-quarter, which helped to offset lower average realized oil prices and helped deliver strong Upstream adjusted EBIT of $46.8 billion versus last quarter. In Downstream, we achieved a record result driven by structural efficiencies and strong refining performance. In fact, our Q3 adjusted EBIT of $10.3 billion was nearly as much as that of the previous two quarters combined.
Free cash flow this quarter was higher than last quarter and last year, reflecting both the resilience of underlying performance and the favorable working capital movements in the third quarter, as I highlighted in our August earnings call. We generated $87.4 billion of free cash flow, excluding working capital, in the first nine months of 2026, which is 35% higher than the same period of last year. Financial discipline runs deep into every decision we make. We continue to assess ways to optimize our portfolio, and an example is the sale of our interest in PRefChem Refinery in Malaysia, which increased our Q3 unadjusted net income by around $7 billion.
Furthermore, we are maintaining our 2026 capital investment guidance at $50 billion-$55 billion while absorbing both costs associated with asset restoration and the $2.6 billion cash investment in HUMAIN. For the third quarter, the Board has announced a base dividend of SAR 82.1 billion, equivalent to $21.9 billion, up 3.5% year-on-year. This will be paid on the 25th of November to shareholders who own our shares on the eligibility date of the 16th of November. Now, before we move to Q&A, let me summarize and leave you with three key attributes of why we believe Aramco is well-positioned for the future.
First, we are delivering effectively. We have flexibility, multiple export routes, available spare capacity, and an integrated delivery network. Second, we are well-positioned and we have significant growth. Our maximum sustainable capacity of 12 MM bpd gives us the capability to increase production to meet higher demand in less than three weeks. On an annual basis, with each additional million barrels per day of production, we expect to generate $12 billion-$14 billion in operating cash flows based on our indicative rules of thumb and 2026 average Brent prices.
Our Upstream and Downstream investments help sustain growth and capture higher margins. And our investment in HUMAIN adds opportunities in AI and further value upside. Third, we offer an unrivaled financial strength with ROACE, gearing, and underlying cash generation significantly better than peers, all supporting continued investment and shareholder returns. Today, we have shown that despite the challenges we faced in Q3, we have increased production, successfully brought on major projects, delivered value through our integrated model, grown free cash flow, maintained strong capital discipline, and increased our dividend by 3.5% versus last year. With that, thank you for your attention. Amin, Peter, and I are now pleased to take your questions.
To ask a question, please press star followed by one on your telephone keypad. To withdraw your question, please press star followed by two. And when asking your question, please ensure you are unmuted locally. I shall now hand back to Mr. Hutton.
Hello, everybody. Welcome. Let me ask the first question from Iyad Ghulam of SNB. Iyad, go ahead.
[Non-English content] Congratulations for the very strong results. I have two questions. The first one is about oil prices and refining margins, where we have seen a very strong performance during the previous period. From a macro perspective, how do you see the supply-demand dynamic, and how long do you expect global inventories to build up again, especially that the winter season is entering? My second question is about production. As you have mentioned that September was the highest level of production since the conflict started in February, can you please shed some light on how was that achieved and how sustainable is this as we are entering Q4 and w hat would be the impact on CapEx to maintain this resilience of production? Thank you.
Thank you, Iyad. With regard to oil prices and supply-demand fundamentals, the world is starting with the ninth month now of the historically unprecedented supply shock, with the gross loss of over 3 billion barrels, a net loss of around 2 billion barrels. The supply shock that we are seeing, masked by Aramco East-West Pipeline exports, significant inventory withdrawals that are finite, and demand management measures that cannot be sustained indefinitely.
The global demand that we see today has proven to be more robust than many anticipated earlier. We don't see any structural decline in demand, rather unmet demand due to supply constraint into petrochemical and residential sectors. Demand will come back stronger, not only to meet base demand growth, but also to build cushion for energy security, a priority that is now at the top of every country's agenda. We've seen China now has indeed come back as a major crude oil buyer.
In October, the import increased to almost 9.3 MM bpd, up 1.4 million barrels from September. Remember, China dropped their import to almost 6 million barrels in June to manage their imports. However, now we can see that they are picking up in terms of additional imports. Their imports through seaborne is around 11.3, so they are only 2 million barrels below pre-conflict levels. And c onsidering that they used to use a lot of that, almost more than 1 million barrels to fill in inventory, right now they are not filling inventory, so we see demand picking up.
With regard to commercial and strategic inventories that you have asked, they are under severe strain and trying to cushion this supply shock, and now it's clearly thin and mostly locked up in operating system and cannot provide a buffer for prolonged disruptions. People talk about the 10 billion barrels of inventory. We've seen how difficult it is really to release any. The IEA started with 426 million barrels, then they had a lot of discussion to come up with an additional 100 million barrels.
So if you add them up, it's around 500 milion barrels, with something coming from China on top of that. But you can see the 10 billion barrels are not available, otherwise you would not struggle with releasing more from the inventory. It's mostly pipeline fill, whatever in tankers, minimum tank levels, and some required for operation reasons. We see that if the situation continues, it will take up to two years for an average rate of 2 million barrels just to replenish the depleted inventory.
So with regard just a little bit about refining, we see the high refining margins, and the global refining products market has lost around 5 million barrels. From the Arabian Gulf, this region, almost 2 million barrels. From Russia-Ukraine conflict, around 2 million barrels. Add to that around China's curbing on refined product export, another 1 million barrels. So total is around 5 MM bpd. That is significant, and that's why it's putting a lot of pressure on margins for refined products. Shipping is also another constraint, because there's not that many VLCC, the effective VLCC that are available, very large crude carriers, is around 540. There are some that we call them part of the shadow fleets.
That is not usable, and some that have an age limit that are not accepted in certain ports. The effective fleet today is 540. It takes a much longer route to export because of the current situation from the Mediterranean, from Sidi Kerir, from other regions to go to the customers, and we lose approximately 25% of the efficiency in the tanker fleets. Add to that, there is more than 130 attacks, mostly on VLCC, as a result of the current situation, especially here in the Gulf region, and that also eliminated almost 15% of the effective fleet.
If you add them up, efficiency loss and tanks attack or tankers attack, you lost almost 40% of your effective fleet. That will put a lot of burdens on export, and we can see that in freight costs now is 15 times globally compared to pre-conflict levels. Your second question about the production, we are 1.1 million barrels higher than last quarter. We were able to balance our exports through the western region using our East-West. Even with the attack on our East-West Pipeline, we were able within days to put it back and maximize exports through the western region, and as well as using our export terminals from the Gulf and using ship-to-ship for customers that are not willing to come and load from our facilities, but they come outside the Strait of Hormuz and we are loading.
We are picking up. September was a big month for us in terms of export, and the third quarter in general is, as I said, higher by 1.1 million barrels and w e expect, as we continue with export, utilizing all the routes that we have, which is either through the Red Sea or through the Mediterranean using the SUMED or the Suez Canal and Port Said, or through the Gulf to maximize our production going forward in the fourth quarter.
Thank you, Iyad. The next question is from Biraj Borkhataria of RBC. Biraj, floor is yours.
Hi. Thanks for taking my question, and thank you for the presentation. The first one's on the HUMAIN AI acquisition. Could you just touch on where the initial focus would be, and also the commentary on new revenue streams? I'm interested in that aspect. The second question is just to follow up on the macro question, and thank you for the commentary.
In the scenario where underlying demand is robust and the world needs to refill inventories, and maybe some countries want to build bigger buffers against future shocks, there's obviously an argument for where a company like Aramco should be expanding production capacity beyond the MSC of 12. I know this is a government decision, but I would just be interested in your thoughts on that. You clearly have the resource, you have the financial capacity, so I'm just thinking about Aramco in the medium term. Any thoughts on that would be helpful. Thank you.
Thank you, Biraj. Our interest in AI is demonstrated by our technology realized value that we keep highlighting. Aramco has realized $11 billion in technology realized value over the last three years. Almost more than 50% is AI-related and digitalization and t his reflects our ability to maintain the lowest lifting cost. Our lifting cost is really supported a lot by capitalizing on technology. Even during this crisis, we have demonstrated the use of AI in our asset restoration plan, materials management, recruitment, etc., and we have been able to use drones while we have our facility being attacked to focus our fire hydrants and foam utilization and restoration, as well as material requirements from the facility that is impacted.
Our investment in HUMAIN is attractive on multiple fronts. First, it's strengthening our strategic position in AI and enhance our long-term competitiveness. It captures the value and provides us a direct access to world-class AI infrastructure, computer power, advanced AI models and solutions, contributing to additional cost advantage, and generates demand for our gas and renewable energy sources, which we can deliver to users from our structurally advantaged position here in the kingdom.
Our participation in HUMAIN will give us also an edge while we continue executing disciplined investment to maximize shareholder value, as it provides us with opportunities for revenue growth and attractive margins. We invested, as we highlighted in the presentation, around $2.6 billion in cash together with the transfer of key AI assets this year. And c onsidering the value that we are creating just from AI over the last three years, and the opportunity that it will bring in terms of utilization of our resources to power these data centers, we think it's a great investment.
With regard to your question about demand and the need to fill in the storage, I mentioned that if things normalize today, you need approximately 2 million barrels of additional supply for two years just to replenish what we have depleted. This is if things normalize today. And as you highlighted, every country that we are visiting, our partners around the world, is asking for additional storage facilities because what we noticed is certain countries, they have 90 days buffer to meet their requirements. Some have only 45 days, and some countries only have few days.
Now, security of supply is center front for our partners, for different countries, and we got a lot of calls these days for additional storage, to avail additional storage facilities in different countries, and we are working on that. I would think going forward, in addition to what is needed of 2 million barrels to replenish inventory, you will need another 1 million barrel just for the new storage facilities that countries and companies will start to build so that they do not end up with the current position that we are in today. That would require definitely additional supply.
Unfortunately, most of the spare capacity is available within the region, and we can maximize if things stabilize or normalize in terms of how much we can put into the market. But going back to your point, the 12 million barrels sustained capacity that we have, it is subject to this is the maximum that we have, and it will take us less than three weeks to bring it to market if we are called upon by the government. As you know, going beyond the 12 million barrels is something that, as per the agreement, is something that you have to go and get that mandate to expand it beyond 12 million barrels.
But considering our reserve base and how much we have in terms of reserves and resources, it is not difficult. But as I said, this is not for the company to decide on expanding the MSC. It is for the government if they decide to expand the maximum sustained capacity, considering our reserves and all of it, we can deliver on that if we are asked on that.
Thank you. Thank you, Biraj. The next question is from Michele Della Vigna of Goldman Sachs. Go ahead, Michele.
Thank you very much and I think congratulations on a quarter that showed the full value of resilience through extra export routes, extra inventories, but also all of the Downstream expansion strategy of the last few years. I wanted to ask really two questions, if I may. The first one is relating to your gas strategy. You continue to expand very quickly. I was wondering if you could give us a bit more light on the continued improvement in drilling efficiency there and how this also is benefiting the broader industrial growth of the country.
And secondly, I wanted to come back to realizations, and I was wondering if you could help us a little bit model realizations in the fourth quarter with all of its moving parts. On the positive side, the big kind of dated premium we are seeing on Brent and on crude, and on the other side also some of the higher shipping costs. Thank you.
Thank you, Michele Della Vigna. I will answer the first question regarding the gas strategy, and Ziad will talk about realization. With regard to our gas strategy, we are increasing our gas by more than 80% by 2030 compared to 2021. That is our strategy. Jafurah, for example, the Phase 1, which was commissioned, with first gas achieved late last year, and has a huge potential. The second phase is expected to come on stream by 2027, with the full potential of Jafurah, 2 billion sales gas by 2030 but t he good thing about our gas, especially the unconventional, is that it is rich with liquid.
Jafurah alone, which is only 2 billion, is bringing 630,000 bbls of high-value liquids and 420 MMSCFD of additional ethane to the system. We are also looking at, as I said, this is the unconventional part of what we are doing, but there is also a lot of conventional growth in our gas. We have number of plants coming on stream, and that will bring the 80% that we talked about by 2030. We talked about almost, if you look at our gas by that time, almost 6 MMboe . This is how much gas we will have by 2030. Gas is an important enabler, not only for the utility sectors within the Kingdom, replace liquid burning, almost close when we started this a few years back, talking about almost 1 million bpd of liquid fuel across utility and industry and agriculture. That will be eliminated by availing this additional gas.
So, it will avail more liquid for us to export in the future when this gas is availed. Also, it will help us also in terms of emissions and reducing the price to consumers, because gas is much better for utilization and in terms of cost. There is a higher demand for electricity, so most of that gas, or all of it, will be utilized in the kingdom, not only, as I said, for utility and liquid burning replacement, but also for added industry. There is a huge growth in industry within the kingdom, and for that, they need a lot of that gas.
So, this has a lot of value other than the side benefits in terms of our petrochemical sector growth with the additional ethane that will be coming, the additional liquids that will be coming also with gas. Jafurah, as I said, is only by itself 630,000 bbls of development. So, a lot of benefits to the company in terms of value that is going to come as a result of bringing that additional gas. That will be reflected in our free cash flow in the future. Ziad?
Yes, thank you, Professor. Michele, on your question on realizations, freight costs have increased considerably, but we have freight arrangements in place that we have done a while back, so that helps a little bit and t he second thing to keep in mind is that 51% of our output is actually going into our own Downstream system, so that helps us actually kind of capture the value, whether it is in sales or in the Downstream. The third thing to keep in mind is that all of our sales are to our long-term customers, and so we are able to push these volumes.
We have optimized the way we actually deliver, especially from the East, by having a lot of shuttling and a lot of ship-to-ship transfers, which helps us reduce and control the increases to a certain extent on shipping b ecause one of the reasons the freight rates are so high, especially the limited number of vessels that are willing to enter the Arabian Gulf, so we are able to use the ships that we have access to shuttle outside of the Arabian Gulf and then do a lot of ship-to-ship transfers. So, this is how we are kind of managing or mitigating some of the increases in shipping rates. And like Amin mentioned, we have already started, of course, the fourth quarter. We are managing that well, similar to what we have done in Q3.
Thank you, Michele. And next question is from Henri Patricot at UBS. Go ahead, Henri.
Apologies. Can you hear me?
We can, yes.
Okay, great. Thank you.
Yeah, we can hear you, Henri.
Yes. Two questions, please, from my side. The first one, on the CapEx guidance for 2026, could you see it staying between $50 billion and $55 billion, despite the HUMAIN acquisition and the restoration costs? Are you finding more efficiencies elsewhere? Are you managing to achieve this and a ny indication you can give us for CapEx beyond 2026? Then second topic on the pipeline routes and the expansion. Any more details you can share on the timeframe and capacity of this new pipeline? Thank you.
Thank you, Henri. As we highlighted in the presentation earlier, the guidance continue to be the same, $50 billion- $55 billion, taking into consideration the restoration cost and the injection into HUMAIN. We have optimized our capital spending. Also, you have to consider that our total liquid production was lower than planned and lower than last year, which gave us the opportunity to optimize further in our spending for maintain potential, because you are not spending.
When you produce at a much higher rate, your maintain potential differs depending on how much barrels you are putting into the market and how much you are getting out from these wells. So, that allowed us to optimize our capital spending and maintain potential, because we are producing less than the plan in 2026, as you compare it to 2025. So w e are able to, as I said, manage within the same guidance for this year. For next year, we will announce our numbers in March of 2027 for the guidance for 2027 and yo ur second question is—
Pipeline expansion.
—pipeline expansions. I think His Royal Highness Prince Abdulaziz, the Minister of Energy, highlighted that we are looking at expansions going through the western region, through Red Sea. Major expansions for our capacity, going much more than the 7 million barrels that we currently have. We are also in the process of doing the engineering, actually, of other routes, in addition to the current routes.
Today, if you look at our routes for export, we are using the Gulf. We can use the Strait of Bab-el-Mandeb. And you have through the Suez Canal, you have two ways through, either the SUMED pipeline or through the Suez Canal using Suezmax tankers if needed. So, you have three routes for export. We are looking at additional routes, and we are doing the engineering at this stage for these additional routes. For regard to the expansion to our East-West Pipelines and the additional network that we are building there, this work is already started.
Thank you, Henri. Next question from Kim Fustier, HSBC. Go ahead, Kim.
Hi, good morning. Thanks for taking my questions. I wanted to go back to Downstream. It had a really strong quarter with high apparent supply reliability of almost 98%. I wonder if you could update us on refinery utilization across the portfolio, particularly in kingdom, given the disruptions. Which refineries are still operating below normal capacity, if any, and when would you expect them to return to normal? And the secondly, on Zuluf and projects. Zuluf started up production in the third quarter despite all the disruptions. So could you talk about the operational or supply chain measures that allowed you to keep that project on track and what does that experience tell you about your ability to execute on the wider project portfolio given the current situation?
Thank you, Kim. We continue to increase integration and maximize the use of our existing refineries. Yes, some of them were attacked and disrupted. We have been able to restore these facilities quickly, put them back onto the system, and that's why we were able to maximize the utilization of our in-kingdom refining. We look at our equity close to 4 million barrels, more than 4 million barrels when you look at our refinery equity, and we are not only restricted to whatever is in the kingdom. We have a lot of investment outside the kingdom, in the U.S. with our Motiva or S-Oil or Hyundai Oilbank, or in China. We have other assets globally that helped us to improve in our performance, capturing the additional margin that we see globally.
And in spite of the attacks, we were able, as I say, to restore and put them back quickly on stream and maximize also the use of all assets, not only the one in the western region, but including the ones in the eastern regions, in terms of keeping them on maximum utilization. Now, your question about Zuluf and supplies in with Shaybah, and how did we keep it, put it on. Zuluf is 600,000 barrels of Arabian Heavy that came on stream. We are bringing a lot of projects. As I said, we have a good number of projects going on right now, all on track. We do use different routes for especially what we call them high-length equipments or big-size equipments that we need for this column or a big piece of equipment.
We either can bring them through the western region, through Red Sea, or in certain cases, we bring them also, we manage to bring them through the Gulf, or we can bring them through Ju'aymah and Ras Tanura. So we do have different routes to continue to bring up equipment that is needed to continue with regard to our capital program and keep it on track. We have also benefited a great deal from our local content and w e have highlighted that almost 90% of what we used in our restoration activities within Aramco was locally sourced.
That helped us to put things back on surface quickly, without having to wait for delivery of materials and equipment from outside of the kingdom. That program will continue because it gives us a lot of resilience and strength in maintaining our activities and keeping our projects on track. But as I said, similar to our routes in delivering crude products, we have also different routes for delivering materials and equipment, and our local content helped us a great deal.
Thank you, Kim. Next question, Martijn Rats of Morgan Stanley. Over to you, Martijn.
Yeah, good morning. Can I just say that these were very impressive results under very difficult circumstances? I want to ask you two questions. You just mentioned that, of course, you'll give CapEx guidance for 2027 at the full-year results. But in terms of the broad trend, the broad guidance that we've been talking about for some while is sort of a peak around the middle of the decade, which could sort of be 2026. So, is that broad pattern still intact or have the events of the last couple of months, which probably require, as you mentioned, more investment in pipeline infrastructure and other things, have they changed that broader outlook as the decade unfolds?
And the second thing I wanted to ask you just reminded all of us that natural gas production is going to grow 80% between 2021 and 2030. From a modeling perspective, one of the difficulties is always kind of like trying to figure out how profitable and what the sort of earnings impact of that, what the margins are on every cubic feet of gas. Could you sort of say a bit about 80% production growth, but broadly, what are the margins on that?
Yes. Thank you. Martijn, with regard to the 80% growth in our gas, as we highlighted, that is going to happen by 2030, and it will give us a lot of additional flexibility, as I said, to replace all the liquid burnings that we have within the kingdom in the utility sectors, and replace a lot of liquid burning and I feel all of that accrued for export and t hat is important in terms of the additional value. I think, Ziad, you can highlight how much we are looking at in terms of additional value as a result in 2030.
Yeah. Thank you, Amin. Martijn, on the gas investments, we as explained earlier, the agreed IRRs on these new gas investments is double-digit return, so you can think of them as 12%-14%. We have calculated or estimated this to add about $12 billion-$15 billion of incremental OCF in 2030. So, I hope that is helpful in your calculations and modeling. As far as your question on the broad trend of CapEx guidance, we did say that we are peaking mid-decade. We are expecting that to continue, but we will provide, as Amin mentioned earlier, we will provide the specific guidance in March. We do, however, have I just want to remind you that we said if we do have additional opportunities, that we will come with explanations on what they are.
This is, at this point, a general statement or a caveat that I am making, the same one we made the last few years when we said, or when we gave guidance on the capital profile. So just like we did with HUMAIN this year, we said the capital guidance that we provided did not include HUMAIN, but then during the year, we were able to optimize, like Amin mentioned, and ended up within the capital or sticking to the capital guidance, including HUMAIN. This hasn't changed since the past few years. We are still expecting the same capital or CapEx profile, but again, depending on the opportunities that we have. We said we will always seek opportunities to create additional shareholder value, so we will be more specific in March.
Also, just to add, if you want to model it, when we do any gas projects with guaranteed double-digit rate of return on that investment, because all of that gas is utilized within the kingdom and w e have been on track in terms of how much we benefit as a result of putting all of these gas facilities and our profitability from gas as a result of that agreement of a double-digit rate of return from the government in terms of equalizations required to meet all of these requirements. So, this has been the case since the beginning, and we will continue to capitalize on availing more gas. I had highlighted, you are talking about, in barrel of oil equivalent by 2030, 6 MMboe . That is how much gas we will be bringing on stream.
Thank you, Martijn. And we've still got quite a few questions to go, and we always like to keep our projects on time, apart from my IR scenes on the call, so we'll try and keep it fairly sharp if we can. The next question is from Sashank Lanka of Bank of America. Go ahead, Sashank.
Yes. Thank you very much, and congratulations on the strong results. Most of my questions have been answered, but just one on the HUMAIN acquisition, the 49% stake. Can you talk us through the build-out of the data center capacity of 3 GW by 2030 that's mentioned? Is it going to be more back-end loaded at this point? Thank you.
Yeah. Thank you, Sashank. As you know, they're talking about 3 GW, if you talk to, in terms of data centers by 2030, and they're working with hyperscalers in terms of their requirements and getting an offtake for these data centers. So, we are benefiting, or HUMAIN is benefiting a lot from the access to the power grid and the land, and also lower-cost power generation. So, that make them very attractive for hyperscalers to get an offtake for these data centers.
So, it's a mix of a lot of these things, and they are in the middle of it. They already secured some offtakes from some of these hyperscalers, and they are maximizing that, considering, as I said, the benefits that you see in the kingdom if you build a data center here with the power grids availability and the land and the lower-cost power. If you need renewable, it's available, and if you need gas, it's also, it's available.
Thank you, Sashank. Next question is from Matt Lofting at J.P. Morgan. All yours, Matt. Matt?
Perhaps you could remind us of the competitive advantages there and whether the ability to respond has even accelerated through this year owing to factors including learning effects. Thank you.
Sorry, Matt, we've missed the first part of that question. We just got the second half. Can you repeat it, please?
Yeah, let me try and repeat it. I was just referring to your earlier point on Aramco's benchmarked capacity to deliver emergency response six times faster than industry standard. Perhaps you could remind us of the competitive advantages there and whether you think the company's ability to respond has even accelerated as you've gone through 2026. Thank you.
Thank you, Matt. That benchmark, we did it before this crisis. I can assure you, if we do the benchmark after this crisis, that six times will be much higher. We are benefiting from, first, our contingency plan and our gap analysis and the drills that we do and t hrough these contingency plans, gap analysis that we do on a continuous basis. As I always say, you cannot build resilience when you have a crisis. This happens decades in advance, so i t started with this delivering on all of these contingency plan and strategies and identifying the gaps and doing the drills and all of these things, so then p eople comes at the heart of it in terms of training to handle and deal with something like this.
And also, we benefited big deal out of our local content and availing almost 90% for the restoration from within, o ur infrastructure is built with our standards. It is completely different than the global standard. It is more stringent. It takes and caters for a lot of flexibility and redundancy that is not available in other plants globally. That helped us a great deal. Of course, the big elements is the East-West Pipeline, which was built decades ago, was utilized at a lower rate, and all of a sudden, we were able to bring it back to 7 million. We built the gas storage facility, one of the biggest in the world, and had it available in case there is any disruptions.
But it all starts, I always say, when we have an accident or incident, just to give you an idea about, when we go to the disaster control center and we look at the fires, our works start there. The teams, they start identifying materials while the fire is raging, and then they bring it from procurement, start kicking in. Drones are used also to give us insight and deliver automated maps for the sites that impacted. By the time you put off these fires, you will find all the materials, all the manpower, all the experts. We, today, have 10, what we call them, 10 teams.
Each team has three shifts. Each team has the capability to handle major disruptions in our facilit so w e can simultaneously, in parallel, handle 10 disruptions at the same time with the same capability. That is why we were able to put things in days, not weeks, not months, not years, in days b ecause we developed that experience, we made sure our people who are trained on tackling these things. You remember the incident started with us, or the attacks in 2019, a lot of learning.
Every incident or disruptions that we have is a learning experience, and we build on that. So we have captured a lot of learning. Case in point is the East-West Pipeline disruptions and how fast we were able to restore it. The different facilities that were attacked, how fast we were able to restore all of these facilities but y ou need a lot of elements. In addition, you have to also recognize our partners, contractors. Really, they did a great job in supporting us during this conflict. They have been there with us, with our teams. You see, it is the infrastructure, it is the people, it is the availability of spare parts, materials, equipment, the redundancy that is catered for all of that, and it is having the contingency and the scenario planning in advance.
Every disruption that we had, we had a scenario before it happened that this could happen. What would be required? What will be the material needed if that section of the plant is attacked? What type of people you will need at that location? How fast they can be there? All of these things, as part of the drills that we have done over the years, allowed us to execute in, as I said, in matters of days, putting back facilities on operation. I think if we go back now and do the benchmark, we were, as I said, this benchmark happened before this crisis.
Imagine the learning over the last almost now we are getting into the ninth month that our people got out of as a result of dealing with all of this and putting these facilities, and you see it reflected in our numbers. Our results speak for itself. We have seen the third quarter now. We are able to put these facilities back on and continue to maximize our delivery to our customer. Our reliability, by the way, is not impacted. And it is still, I think, if I am not mistaken, it is still at 97%, 98%. We used to be 99- point something. We are slightly below 99% right now, but still, I think we were in the 97% or 98%, 97%-98% today.
Thank you very much. Thanks, Matt. Next question is from Mohammed Thunayan at Jadwa. Go ahead, Mohammed.
Yes, [Non-English content] . Thank you for having us on the call, and thank you, and the team congratulations on the great set of results. Could you provide more color on the working capital pressure during the nine months of 2026 and whether it could normalize during the fourth quarter? If not, I wonder if the PLD formula become adjusted based on the free cash flow excluding working capital, which remained positive at around SAR 21.7 billion as of nine months 2026.
Thank you, Mohammed. Ziad?
Thank you, Mohammed. The working capital has already normalized, actually, in Q3. The main driver of this is the structure that we have on how we calculate or when we calculate taxes, royalties, and most importantly, the price equalization. There was a time lag on the price equalization, as we explained in the middle of the year with H1 results a nd as we explained that this would normalize through Q3, this has mostly normalized in Q3. If you look at our cash generation ability, our cash from operations has actually increased 52% quarter-on-quarter. So, free cash flow more than doubled quarter-on-quarter, and it is up 20% year-on-year and so I hope that addresses your working capital concern and t his has already normalized in Q3.
Mohammed, thank you very much for that question. Let me move on to Lydia Rainforth at Barclays.
Thank you, and good afternoon. I talk in prayers, obviously, to all of the Aramco families as you have been dealing with the attacks. We have obviously covered a lot of ground, so just very quickly, we have talked a lot about CapEx numbers, but we have also talked about energy security. I just wanted to get your sense of who actually pays for this long term. Is it the consumer, or do we just have to run, like companies like Aramco will have to run with higher OpEx and higher kind of ultimately working cap and ultimately higher CapEx numbers? I just want to get that sense of between that kind of idea of resilience, but who and energy security. Thanks.
Thank you, Lydia. It is both. It is producers and consumer. It is not the responsibility of one. It is the responsibility of the whole world. You need to ensure, I think resilience, it is not captured, unfortunately, by analysts when you evaluate companies. ESG and other things and financial. I think resilience is an important element that needs to be taken into consideration from now on when companies are evaluated. Because we are in a geopolitical situation globally, not necessarily here in the region, that a lot of disruptions as a result of more drones and more missiles and rockets, technologies being distributed around the world and might fall in the wrong hands in different parts of the world.
So resilience is something that is critical, and I think the current situation has proven that if you do not have resilience, and it is not something that you can build over when you have a crisis. Resilience is something that needs to be done in decades in advance and t here has to be more scrutiny on companies when it comes to evaluating their resilience. It should not be only ESG, it should be how resilient they are to handle disruptions, what type of routes they have, what type of facilities, what is their response time, and what is their scenario planning when it comes to these type of emergencies.
I think security of supply, as I said, it will come to center front for all countries right now. We always talk about reliability of supply, sustainability, and security. A lot of focus was on affordability and sustainability. Not a lot of focus, I would say, on security of supply before this recent disruptions. So I think it will be center front every country now. We see a lot of calls in terms of building additional inventory. That is important element if you want to secure supply during disruptions and w e noticed that certain countries have only a few days of supply available in their inventory. Some have 90 days, and they are finding even the 90 days now is fairly thin considering this crisis now stretching to nine months, and it could go longer.
So I do not know if the 90 days is anymore good enough. They need to also reconsider how much of supply needs to be available. Otherwise, you will end up with a situation like this. You can see the prices of jet fuels and diesels. This is today. If this also stretched longer, it will be really disrupting to the global economy, a real disruption to the global economy. So I totally agree, but it is a responsibility for producers and consumers. I think for analysts, that needs to be a subject that needs to be reviewed when evaluating companies in the future.
Lydia, thank you for that question. Next question is from Bertrand Hodée at Kepler Cheuvreux. Bertrand?
Yes. Hello. Thank you for taking my question. I have a follow-up on the Henri question on your plans to expand pipeline capacity to bypass Hormuz. Can you quantify what you have in mind on the East-West Pipeline expansion in terms of capacity? You qualified it as a major expansion, but maybe you can give us a bit of color. On complement to East-West Pipeline expansion, you also alluded to other potential Red Sea routes. Also, if you are able to quantify or to give us an early indication of what are the pipeline capacity expansion you are considering here. Thank you.
Yeah. Thank you. As I said, East-West, we are undergoing right now expansions for the East-West, 7 million barrels. As His Royal Highness Prince Abdulaziz highlighted earlier, that we are looking at 10 million barrels going from the east to the west in terms of capacity. As you highlighted also, we are looking at other routes, but until we get And we are doing the engineering currently. But until we get to final investment decisions, we are not going to announce what we are doing with terms of these expansions.
But we are looking at, as I said, different routes, doing our engineering, and before we get to final investment decisions, we are not going to highlight which are routes and what we will be doing for the time being. East-West is something that was already highlighted earlier, and they talked about 10 million barrels, going from 7 million barrels to 10 million barrels.
Thank you, Bertrand. The last question is from Mark Wilson at Jefferies. Thank you for your patience, Mark. Go ahead.
Okay. Thank you very much. Obviously, most things have been asked. I take your point completely on the resilience point. I would like to ask about the state of the exports in the past quarter, liquids of 8.7 million barrels, and I suppose we assume 7 millio barrels of those are going across the East-West Pipeline with 2 million barrels of them used for domestic refining, leaving 5 million barrels for export. So, would we be correct in assuming the balance, therefore, is around Strait of Hormuz, the ship-to-ship availability and risk appetite being the limit, is the question. Numerous reports have talked about transits and volumes getting back to pre-crisis levels around the Strait of Hormuz. So, how do we tally those two points? Thank you very much.
Thank you, Mark. We don't give a split of how much we use internally, how much we send through the Red Sea and through Sidi Kerir and the Mediterranean, and how much we exit or through the Gulf. But I will say something about pre-crisis level exiting through the Gulf. There is a lot of talk about how much is growing through the Gulf. We need to take into consideration there is a lot of double numbers that are being utilized. Because of the ship-to-ship that's exiting, the tankers has to wait considerable amount of time before exiting the Gulf until they have a safe passage. Even coming in, they have to wait for some time.
When they exit after they load, there is also a ship-to-ship. Unfortunately, some of the numbers that we are seeing, they double count. They count it when it is filled in the terminals, and then they count it when the ship-to-ship happens outside the Strait of Hormuz. So, that's where the confusion about how much is. In certain days, you see high numbers, in certain days, because these crossings and exits happen at different numbers depending on the safety consideration for these tankers to exit the Strait of Hormuz. So, no, it is not at pre-conflict level yet.
Okay. On that note, let me thank you for participating in our call today. Thank you to the management for their time. As always, any follow-up questions, please get in touch with investor relations. Always happy to take your questions and t he next scheduled call will be our full-year results, which will be in the beginning. Okay. Thank you very much indeed.
This concludes today's call. Thanks, everyone, for joining. You may now disconnect your lines.