More than 90% of the materials Aramco used to restore operations after the recent damage were sourced within the Kingdom, according to its president and CEO, Amin Nasser. Nasser said this helped bring facilities back online within hours and days rather than weeks and months. The figure reveals an economic dimension of local content that goes beyond jobs and factories: having a nearby supply chain can serve as a form of insurance against the cost of waiting and production disruptions during a crisis.

When we talk about local content, a familiar set of goals usually comes to mind:

Factories in the Kingdom.

Jobs for citizens.

Local suppliers.

Technology transfer.

And a larger share of spending staying within the national economy.

But a figure cited by Amin Nasser, Aramco’s president and CEO, at the World Petroleum Congress in Riyadh on October 12, 2026, points to another function of local content, one that may be less visible:

Time.

Nasser said that more than 90% of the materials used to restore operations were sourced within the Kingdom, enabling Aramco to bring damaged facilities back online in “hours and days, instead of weeks and months.”

That changes the question.

Instead of asking only:

How many jobs did local content create?

We can ask:

How many days of downtime did it help prevent?

This turns local content from simply an industrial policy tool into something like—metaphorically speaking—an industrial insurance policy.

What exactly does local content mean?

Put simply, local content means increasing the value created within an economy by purchasing goods and services locally, developing suppliers, employing and training the workforce, and building industrial and technological capabilities within the country.

For Aramco, the In-Kingdom Total Value Add (iktva) program is one of the main tools for achieving this.

Launched more than a decade ago, the program reached its target of 70% local content in Aramco’s supply chain in early 2026, while the company aims to raise the share to 75% by 2030. Aramco says that since its launch, the program has helped create more than 200,000 direct and indirect jobs, attract around $9 billion in foreign investment, and enable the manufacture of 47 strategic products in the Kingdom for the first time.

But it is important not to confuse two figures.

70% is a broad measure of local content associated with Aramco’s spending, procurement, and supply chain.

By contrast, more than 90% refers to the share of materials that Nasser said were used specifically in the recent recovery and operations and sourced within the Kingdom.

So the 90% figure does not mean that Aramco’s overall local content has reached 90%.

Distinguishing between these measures is essential to understanding the figure correctly.

Why can a nearby bolt be worth more than a cheap bolt from far away?

Imagine an industrial facility needs a spare part.

An overseas supplier sells it for 100,000 riyals.

A local supplier sells it for 110,000.

Under normal circumstances, the overseas supplier may seem 10% cheaper.

But what if the facility suddenly breaks down?

The local supplier can deliver the part within hours.

The imported part, however, takes two weeks to ship and clear procedures and transport.

Is the first part still really cheaper?

The answer depends on the cost of facility downtime.

If the facility’s downtime costs one million riyals a day, the 10,000-riyal difference in the part’s price becomes almost insignificant compared with losing 14 days of production.

This is where an important business management concept comes in:

Price is not the full cost.

There is also:

Lead time.

Inventory costs.

The risk of delays.

The cost of production downtime.

Transportation risks.

And the ability to get technical support quickly.

That is why a local supplier may be slightly more expensive under normal conditions, yet far more valuable in exceptional circumstances.

“Lead time”—the figure we don’t see in a product’s price

Supply chain management uses a concept called Lead Time.

It is simply the time between placing an order and the product arriving, ready for use.

On an ordinary day, the difference between one day and 20 days may seem like a logistical issue.

But when a critical facility goes offline, time itself becomes an economic cost.

That is why Nasser’s phrase—“hours and days instead of weeks and months”—matters more than a description of operations.

It means that having suppliers, materials, and capabilities within the Kingdom reduced one of the biggest costs of a crisis:

The cost of waiting.

This is where local content becomes an “option” with value

There is another way to think about a local supplier.

You may not need one every day.

But having one gives a company a ready-to-use option when an external supply chain is disrupted.

This idea is similar to insurance.

We don’t buy insurance because we expect an accident every day.

We buy it because the cost of an accident without protection could be very high.

In the same way, building an industrial base, a network of suppliers, and local repair capabilities may seem like simply a long-term investment in normal times.

But when a shock occurs, its value becomes clear all at once.

This is what Nasser meant when he said that in times of crisis, localization becomes an “economic value multiplier.”

But why not make everything locally, then?

This is where the issue becomes truly economic.

If localization strengthens resilience, why doesn’t every country produce everything within its borders?

Because that could be costly and inefficient.

Countries and companies concentrate parts of their production where cost, technology, or scale advantages exist. This is one of the reasons global trade exists in the first place.

The OECD notes that bringing all supply chains back home is no guarantee of resilience; risks can be domestic as well as external. In the OECD’s models, broad relocalization scenarios could reduce global trade by more than 18% and real global output by more than 5%, without improving stability in every economy.

Research by the International Monetary Fund also found a trade-off between efficiency and resilience: diversifying sources for some sensitive inputs can improve the ability to withstand shocks, but sometimes comes at a higher cost under normal conditions.

So the question is not:

Local or imported?

It is:

What should be available locally, what should have diversified suppliers, and what can safely be sourced from global markets?

That is a more complicated question.

Not every product deserves the same treatment

It may not make economic sense to establish a local factory for every small product a company imports.

But the calculation changes when we are talking about a component that:

Has no quick substitute.

Can bring an entire facility to a halt if it fails.

Takes a long time to import.

Or comes from a very limited number of suppliers.

In this case, the value of having local capacity, backup inventory, or an alternative supplier increases.

This is close to the idea of Critical Inputs.

A part may be small and inexpensive in itself, but its absence could shut down an industrial asset worth billions of riyals.

That is why an input’s importance should not be measured by its price alone, but by what might happen if it disappeared.

This explains why iktva needed a decade, not a crisis

Nasser said that building resilience takes decades, not quarters.

That is an important statement.

A company cannot wait for a crisis and then start looking for a local factory, training its workers, certifying the quality of its products, and building a supply relationship with it.

All of that must happen before the crisis.

The iktva program was launched in 2015 to develop local suppliers and build industrial capabilities in the Kingdom. Aramco says the program has enabled hundreds of investments in new manufacturing facilities and created the capacity to produce dozens of strategic products in the Kingdom for the first time.

What becomes visible when a crisis hits, then, is not just a response in the moment.

It is the result of investments accumulated over years.

From “Just in Time” to “Just in Case”

For a long time, supply chain management focused on minimizing inventory, reducing costs, and receiving materials exactly when they were needed.

This model is known as Just in Time.

Instead of keeping large quantities of materials in warehouses, materials arrive just as the factory needs them.

This model boosts efficiency and lowers inventory costs.

But it becomes more fragile if shipping is disrupted or a sole supplier goes offline.

That is why global crises have renewed interest in an idea that can be summed up as:

Just in Case—being prepared for what might happen.

That means keeping some inventory, having alternative suppliers, or maintaining local capabilities that can be brought online quickly.

The OECD identifies three key elements of resilience: some buffers and redundancy, flexibility to change the supply chain, and the organizational ability to respond quickly.

The economic goal is not to choose one of the two models entirely.

It is to know where maximum efficiency is worth the risk, and where resilience is worth the additional cost.

There is a return that doesn’t show up in a supplier’s sales

When measuring the impact of local content, we usually ask:

How many factories were established?

How many jobs were created?

How many riyals were added to GDP?

These are important indicators.

But Aramco’s case reveals another kind of return that is hard to see:

The loss that never happened.

If the local availability of materials helps bring a facility back online in two days instead of a month, the economic value is not only the value of the products sold by the local supplier.

It also includes the value of production that did not stop, operations that continued, and services that were not interrupted.

These are sometimes called Avoided Losses.

This is similar to the value of a fire protection system.

Years may pass without it being used.

But not using it does not mean it has no value.

Does all local content mean “resilience”?

No.

This is an essential point, so that the analysis does not lead to a broader conclusion than the figures support.

We cannot say that every riyal spent locally increases supply chain resilience by the same amount.

Some products can easily be imported from dozens of markets.

Some foreign suppliers may be better able to keep operating than a single local supplier.

Relying on a sole domestic source could create a new kind of concentration.

That is why true resilience is not isolation.

It means having options.

A strong local supplier.

An alternative overseas supplier.

Appropriate inventory.

Multiple transport routes.

And the ability to change sources quickly.

This is consistent with Nasser’s own point that resilience is not created by a single pipeline, facility, or technology. It is a multilayered system that includes spare capacity, diverse export routes, digital protection, financial strength, and people.

So, what does the 90% figure mean?

We should not read it as merely a high percentage of Saudi procurement.

Its real significance lies in the sentence that followed:

“Hours and days instead of weeks and months.”

That is the link between industrial policy and the real economy.

A local factory produces a part.

A Saudi supplier maintains technical capabilities.

A worker gains experience.

A company can deliver quickly.

A facility gets back to work sooner.

Production continues.

And a loss is avoided.

That is how the value chain starts with a local content program and ends with a more resilient economy.

From localization to “option value”

It may therefore be useful to change how we measure the success of local content policies.

Instead of asking only:

What share of content was local?

We can add other questions:

How much has the time needed to obtain critical inputs fallen?

How many products can now be manufactured locally for the first time?

How many alternative suppliers have become available?

How long does it take to restore production after a failure?

And what potential losses can be avoided because these capabilities exist?

These indicators shift the discussion from “How much did we spend locally?” to a bigger question:

“What capabilities does the economy now have as a result of this spending?”

That may be the most important thing the 90% experience reveals.

Under normal conditions, local content may look like industrial policy.

But when supplies are disrupted and every day of downtime comes at a cost, another function becomes clear.

It is a nearby factory when shipping becomes difficult.

An available engineer when equipment fails.

A spare part that does not spend weeks on its way across the world.

In other words, for some critical inputs, it does not just buy the economy a product.

It buys it time.

And in a crisis, time can be one of the most valuable economic assets.