God (Allah) bless the Saudi’s January 30, 2007
Posted by Al in : interesting,politics , trackbackYou may have noticed petrol prices tumbling recently, and wondered exactly why this was happening. With the Middle East a mess, and with Russia siding more with China than Europe, then it’s hard to explain if you don’t have the facts. However it appears that Saudi Arabia is upping their production massively, and also cutting prices, in order to put pressure on Iran. Since Saudi Arabia is still mainly Sunni, and Iran is full of Shiite (see what I did there – a clever play on words), then Saudi Arabia would love to see the Iranian government fall and a more moderate government take it’s place. This sentiment is echoed around the majority of the rest of the world, and we will ahve to wait and see whether the falling oil prices will have any effect on Iran – my feeling is that there will b e some kind of revolt there in the next 6 months.
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Possible. But I think it’s just as likely that Venezuela is their target. Venezuela may actually have more oil than SA(making them SA’s biggest rival for control of OPEC), but it’s heavier and more expensive to refine. Chavez has said recently that he’d like to see oil pegged at $50 a barrel, as a compromise to keep heavy crude refinement proffitable and protect consumer nations from volitile markets. By ‘volatile markets’ I mean, of course, producers like SA, who can open and close the spigot at will.
And as for wishing doom upon repressive governments, you should really read up on Saudi Arabia.
Fair enough – as I mentioned it is hard to explain if you don’t have the facts, and you may well know more than me on this matter. That doesn’t stop the merging of government and religion being a bad thing, especially when the religion is deeply fundamentalist and doesn’t have much respect for the rest of the world. You’ll notice that I knock fundamentalist christians in the US as much as any muslims, and I am very concerned about the future of the US government as this fundamentalism takes hold through the South and starts to spread North.
I am aware that Saudi Arabia doesn’t have the best record when it comes to dealing with crime, corruption, religious dissent or civil unrest; but compared with the majority of Middle East countries it is probably one of the more liberal regimes. If the time came to take sides in any conflict in the region then Saudi Arabia may have a difficult decision to make – although hopefully that will not happen and at least a semblance of peace and order will return. I think there may be a lot of ordinary folk in the Middle East who fervently wish oil had never been found there, so that the rest of the world would never have this desperate urge to meddle in their affairs.