Saudi Arabia ranks in the top ten producers of 6 commodities: dates (#1, 19% of world output in 2024), crude oil (#2, 11% of world output in 2025), phosphate rock (#6, 4% of world output in 2025), bauxite (#8, 1.3% of world output in 2025), natural gas (#8, 3.2% of world output in 2025), feldspar (#9, 2.1% of world output in 2025). It is a top-ten exporter of crude oil (#1, 14% of world export value in 2024), dates (#1, 18% of world export value in 2024), urea (#4, 8% of world export value in 2024), cardamom (#10, 0.8% of world export value in 2024), sugar (#10, 1.4% of world export value in 2024).
Share of world production, 2024. Countries with no reported production are unshaded.
The Arabian platform is a stack of porous carbonate reservoirs sealed beneath thick evaporite, gently folded and rarely faulted, which is a near-ideal arrangement for trapping oil in very large volumes. Ghawar, found in 1948, remains the largest conventional oilfield ever discovered, and strong natural aquifer drive means wells flow without much help. Reservoirs that shallow, that productive and that few in number give the lowest lifting costs of any major producer. Saudi Arabia produced 11% of the world's crude oil in 2025 (Energy Institute) and held 14% of world crude export value in 2024 (CEPII BACI), the largest share of any exporter.
What makes the country unusual is not volume but the deliberate holding of unused capacity. The state company, taken over in stages between 1973 and 1980, maintains wells and processing plants above the level it produces, so output can be raised or cut by millions of barrels a day within weeks. That spare capacity is the mechanism behind Saudi influence over price and behind the production agreements it negotiates with other exporters. Physical routing matters too: an east-west pipeline to Yanbu on the Red Sea exists so that cargoes can bypass the Strait of Hormuz.
Gas is produced but not exported. Fields associated with the oil, and later the non-associated Jafurah shale, supply 3.2% of world natural gas output in 2025 (Energy Institute), all of it burned at home for power generation, desalination and petrochemicals, which displaces crude that would otherwise be used for the same jobs.
Food moves the other way. Rain is negligible and the aquifers are fossil, so a wheat self-sufficiency program run through the 1980s was wound down after 2008 to stop drawing down groundwater; domestic wheat growing has largely been replaced by purchases abroad. The kingdom bought 4.8% of world rice import value in 2024 (CEPII BACI). Sugar shows a different pattern: refineries at Jeddah buy raw cane sugar, and Saudi Arabia took 4.9% of world sugar import value in 2024 (CEPII BACI) while shipping out 1.4% of world sugar export value in 2024 (CEPII BACI) as refined white sugar to neighboring markets.
What does Saudi Arabia produce?
Commodities where Saudi Arabia is a top-ten producer
Saudi Arabia's largest commodity exports by value. Each bar's share is that commodity's share of world trade in it, not its share of Saudi Arabia's own exports — the two are unrelated and shown so a bar near 100% marks a commodity Saudi Arabia dominates globally rather than one it merely exports a lot of.
Unlike the chart above, this treemap sizes each commodity by its share of Saudi Arabia's own $197 billion of tracked exports, not by world trade. Crude oil alone is 95% of it. See the full export dependency report for how Saudi Arabia compares with other countries.
Commodities where Saudi Arabia is a top-ten exporter
Cardamom: #1, 19% of world imports, $234.3 million (2024)
Barite: #2, 13% of world imports, $120.7 million (2024)
Barley: #2, 9.4% of world imports, $868.1 million (2024)
Rice: #3, 4.8% of world imports, $1.9 billion (2024)
Sugar: #3, 4.9% of world imports, $2.1 billion (2024)
Milk: #4, 4.2% of world imports, $912.9 million (2024)
Cinnamon: #5, 2.7% of world imports, $22.2 million (2024)
Cloves: #5, 4.7% of world imports, $30.6 million (2024)
Plantains: #6, 4.1% of world imports, $44.9 million (2024)
Tea: #6, 3.9% of world imports, $294.1 million (2024)
Chickpeas: #7, 3.3% of world imports, $81.9 million (2024)
Chicken: #8, 3.8% of world imports, $1.4 billion (2024)
Uranium: #8, <0.1% of world imports, $27,630 (2024)
Bauxite: #9, 0.3% of world imports, $38.6 million (2024)
Lamb: #9, 3% of world imports, $266.8 million (2024)
Palm oil: #9, 2.8% of world imports, $1.2 billion (2024)
Corn: #10, 2.4% of world imports, $1.1 billion (2024)
Honey: #10, 2.8% of world imports, $65.5 million (2024)
Titanium: #10, 2.7% of world imports, $85.1 million (2024)
Sources: FAOSTAT (crops and livestock), USGS Mineral Commodity Summaries (minerals), Energy Institute Statistical Review (energy) for production; CEPII BACI for trade. Ranks count only the commodities on this site.
Saudi Arabia commodity by commodity
One page for each commodity where Saudi Arabia is a top-five producer or exporter with at least 3% of the world total.
What the cross-commodity reports under Patterns say about Saudi Arabia, computed from the same data as this page.
What Saudi Arabia uses
Saudi Arabia had about 33 million people and a food supply of 3,660 kilocalories per person a day in FAO's 2023 food balance sheets. Its eight largest supplies among the commodities tracked there:
Largest domestic supplies of tracked commodities in Saudi Arabia, 2023
FAOSTAT Food Balance Sheets. Per-person rank counts countries of at least 1 million people. See consumption and self-sufficiency.
Who supplies Saudi Arabia
Single-supplier markets. Saudi Arabia buys half or more of its imports from one country in 12 of 20 import markets of $250 million or more, among them gold from Switzerland (60%, $8.1 billion); sugar from Brazil (97%, $2.1 billion); steel from China (88%, $1.9 billion); rice from India (75%, $1.9 billion); chicken from Brazil (60%, $1.4 billion); palm oil from Indonesia (59%, $1.2 billion). Import dependency.
Suppliers gaining. Romania in wheat (<0.1% to 48%, +48 points); Russia in barley (12% to 59%, +47 points).
Suppliers losing. Australia in barley (62% to 4.2%, −58 points).
How long Saudi Arabia's own reserves would last
Phosphate rock: Saudi Arabia's reserves are about 100 years of its own output at the current rate (4% of world output, 1.4% of world reserves), against 292 years for the world.
USGS national reserve figures, rounded. A short national figure usually reflects how little has been proved up, not when mining stops. See country reserve life.
Downloads and citation
This country's rankings as JSON · PDF summary. Cite as: Commodity Origins, "What does Saudi Arabia produce and export?", https://commodityorigins.com/countries/SAU/ (CC BY 4.0).
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