In Saudi, Inc., Ellen R. Wald '04, a fellow Princeton alumna, traces how oil became the architecture of Saudi Arabia's national story. Through the rise of Aramco, the centralization of royal authority, and the economic reinvention of the Gulf, Wald writes that "oil was the thread that bound the monarchy to its people." [Wald, Saudi, Inc., p. 19]. Her account positions petroleum as the Kingdom's founding myth—an alchemy of geology and governance that transformed a tribal confederation into a modern state.
Yet myths are only as durable as the generations that inherit them. Today, a new cohort of young Saudis encounters the oil story in far different terms. In textbooks, children's books, public museums, and youth institutions, the narrative remains—but its tone has shifted. Oil is no longer cast in a language of discovery and conquest, but one of duty, stewardship, and national maintenance. The story is less of a miracle, more of a manual.
Wald frames the early decades of Saudi oil development as a decisive, almost divine turning point. "Control over oil production was the mechanism through which [King Abdulaziz] could modernize his state and solidify his reign," she writes [Wald, p. 42]. Her narrative is populated by visionary kings, Western engineers, and oil executives—figures who occupy a heroic register. These were the men who harnessed a hidden resource and launched a kingdom into geopolitical relevance.
That narrative still echoes—but it now begins much earlier. For today's Saudi youth, oil is introduced not through spectacle, but through education, career scaffolding, and cultural ritual.
How Oil Is Taught to Young Saudis
Ithra's iRead Competition
At the King Fahd University of Petroleum and Minerals, engineering students compete in the PetroBowl, an international quiz competition where knowledge of petroleum geology, drilling, and reservoir engineering becomes a vehicle for national performance[PE]. Aramco's Young Leaders Advisory Board, made up of employees under 35, participates in company-wide innovation labs, advising senior leadership on sustainability and future energy transitions[SA]. At Ithra's iRead competition, teenagers have presented research projects on desalination technologies, carbon capture, and Saudi Arabia's environmental history—showcasing how literacy and scientific inquiry are being tied to national development[Ithra]. These platforms cultivate a civic identity organized around energy systems, where fluency in extraction, optimization, and environmental stewardship becomes a form of patriotic participation. This is energy citizenship—social belonging expressed through infrastructural expertise.
Performing Petroleum: Museums and National Imagination
The Dammam 7 Supercomputer, named after the historic Dammam Well No. 7—the "prosperity well" that launched Saudi Arabia's oil industry.
This managerial ethos extends beyond classrooms and storybooks. At the King Abdulaziz Center for World Culture, Ithra, children are invited to "experience" the story of energy[I]. Inside the museum's signature exhibit, The Story of Energy, visitors trace Saudi history from the 1938 discovery of Dammam Well No. 7 to the present day[I]. The well is dubbed "the prosperity well," a sacred origin point. Young visitors are asked: "How will you contribute to our energy future?"[I].
Architecture itself performs petroleum. The building's curved metallic skin, modeled after oil refinery tubes, evokes both industrial prowess and aesthetic legacy. It is oil rendered as national art—refined, not just extracted.
Ithra's programming for youth includes innovation camps and coding classes, but always with a nod to the past. A poster advertising its summer STEM academy reads: "Inspired by our history, powered by your future"[I]. Even as the state pushes toward economic diversification, the cultural framing of oil remains central.
Wald's World vs. Theirs
Wald's Saudi, Inc. reads as a narrative written for global observers—an external-facing account of how oil transformed a state into a corporate-modern powerhouse. It is strategic, elite-driven, and geopolitical. The oil executive and the monarch take center stage.
But the Saudi youth experience a quieter version of this tale. In their world, oil is not leveraged—it is lived. It shapes school curricula, family life, career paths, and civic expectations. It is not dramatized but normalized. No longer the miracle beneath the sand, oil is now the infrastructure of being Saudi.
And yet, what's most striking is how deeply the oil narrative endures—even in an era of diversification. Vision 2030 may promise a post-oil economy, but culturally, oil remains the grammar of national self-understanding. For young Saudis, to be patriotic is still, in part, to be petro-literate. In Wald's telling, oil built the state. In the Saudi youth narrative, oil is the state.
What This Means for Us
What Saudi Arabia is doing through its youth-oriented cultural infrastructure is nation-building through narrative. By embedding oil and its impacts into the emotional and civic development of its youngest citizens, the Kingdom is making energy not just a sector, but a citizenship. This has profound implications for how we, as Americans, understand both the symbolic and strategic dimensions of energy. In the U.S., our energy discourse is fractured: solar is framed as a consumer upgrade, oil as a problem we can't quit, and climate as a partisan wedge. What's missing is a coherent narrative that teaches young Americans not only how energy systems work, but how those systems relate to the stories we tell about responsibility, prosperity, and national belonging.
The Saudi case, then, is not just culturally intriguing—it's strategically illuminating. As Saudi youth are mobilized through initiatives like Ithra, they're being groomed as stewards of the national energy legacy…as agents of continuity. For American entrepreneurs, educators, and civic designers, this presents a significant opportunity: not to replicate Saudi messaging, but to engage with it. There is a rapidly growing demand in the Gulf for culturally fluent educational products, narrative technologies, and civic engagement platforms that align with state priorities yet invite independent thinking. Saudi institutions increasingly partner with foreign technologists and storytellers who can translate energy stewardship into apps, simulations, and immersive learning environments.
But the deepest takeaway may be more introspective. If oil in Saudi Arabia is taught as both an origin story and a moral mandate, what is our equivalent? Where do young Americans learn about the infrastructure that underpins their daily lives—and who is telling them that story? Ellen Wald's Saudi, Inc. showed us how oil could bind a people to their rulers, how a single resource became the scaffolding of a national myth. What today's Saudi institutions are doing is extending that scaffolding to the next generation—integrating it into civic pedagogy, environmental ethics, and cultural architecture. The contrast reveals not just different energy systems, but different philosophies of intergenerational responsibility. The U.S. often treats energy as a technical problem to solve. Saudi Arabia, for better or worse, treats it as a cultural inheritance to manage. And that, perhaps, is the most strategic lesson of all: whoever shapes the next generation's imagination about energy will shape their politics, their industries, and their sense of what the future demands.
Sources Referenced
- https://www.ithra.com/en
- Society of Petroleum Engineers. (2023). PetroBowl Competition Overview. Retrieved from https://www.spe.org/en/students/petrobowl/
- Saudi Aramco. (2021). Young Leaders Advisory Board (YLAB). https://www.aramco.com/en/sustainability/people-and-safety/human-capital-development/ylab
- Ithra. (2023). iRead National Reading Competition. https://www.ithra.com/en/special-programs/iread