Has anyone watched this on a high-res feed, and read the detail on the enormous background screens? I wonder if there's anything to learn there..

I was especially tickled by the statement that "what's good for Saudi Arabia is good for the world"!!! Shades of "Engine" Charles Wilson, CEO of GM, in the 50's! At least Chuck was humble enough to say "what's good for the US is good for GM, and vice versa", instead of this, the misquote usually attributed to him.

Nick,
I also got a kick out of the "what is good for.." comment.

This guy looked at a few HD stills:

http://benfry.com/writing/archives/210

He noted that the big screens just duplicated what was on the smaller computer monitors at the workstations. The big screen is obviously for show and not function.

One wonders how Saudi Aramco was able to churn out even more oil in the 1980's without this "nerve Center".

Big nerve centers like that are pretty much useless. From my experience, smaller curved screens display systems are actually useful as you can do 3D design and fly-throughs and perhaps even 3D graphics visualizations. But then again this whole segment was a prearranged Aramco marketing video that Stahl and company fell for.