This is a true story of an Expat who, for all I know, may still be at Aramco. I worked around him the entire time I was at the company. His story is far from unique. You could probably copy -> paste it onto dozens of "successful" Expats at Aramco.
This is an Expat with a mediocre career in the West before he came to Aramco. The first thing I noticed was that nobody, Expat or Local, talked to him unless they had to. He was polite, but seemed nervous. Once I gained the trust of other Expats, I was told to never confide anything to him because he was a spy for management. I heard he was publicly berated by management when he first started because he had no common sense and over focused on details at the expense of the big picture. Eventually, management figured out that this guy would do ANYTHING they asked, and so he became the designated flunky for whatever Division Head happened to be in charge.
This man is as close as an Expat can come these days to success at Aramco. He was even promoted during the post pandemic labor shortage when management decided to throw bones to their favorite dogs. As far as I know, this man has no friends or family living in the Kingdom. He came in at 6:45 AM and left at 5:15 PM, ate lunch at his desk, and generally seemed to stay busy all day.
If you plan to be at Aramco for more than a couple years, this guy is who you should model yourself after.