The Energy And Market Page, T+118 -- May 18, 2017

Saudi Arabia: Prince Salman's Saudi Vision 2030 plan update:

• 2018: budget to be "expansionary but not significantly so"
• additional spending from savings: "expansion will come from efficiency"
• 2018 budget: first draft should be available in two months
• country is shifting to quarterly reports instead of annual reports in anticipation of the IPO
• 2017 budget: 890 billion riyals ($237 billion) (exchange rate of 3.755)
• 2017: revenue of 692 billion riyals
• 2017, full year deficit: 198 billion riyals ($53 billion)
• austerity measures
• excise tax on soda and tobacco beginning this quarter (2Q17)
• 5% VAT as of 1Q18

Saudi Arabia: Saudi Aramco's only IPO (back in 2008) has delivered losses of 40% to its investors since the IPO -- Bloomberg:

The picture at PetroRabigh isn’t promising: a falling share price, mounting losses and troubled operations. Perhaps more importantly, the plant’s struggles pierce a key narrative that Aramco has built about itself: best-in-class installations, engineering prowess and superior employees. Yet for all the challenges at PetroRabigh, investors are likely to take them in stride.

"Investors will buy into Aramco for its oil production not for its refining," said Danilo Onorino, a portfolio manager at Dogma Capital SA in Lugano, Switzerland. "But they will still look at PetroRabigh to benchmark the valuation of its downstream assets and look for clues about how Aramco works.”

US refiners: US Gulf Coast refiners processed record amount of crude oil in most recent reporting period, via Twitter