US-Saudi Tensions

There has been a lot of chatter recently in foreign policy circles about Saudi Arabia’s internal response to the Arab Spring and its recent intervention in the Shiite majority protests in neighboring Bahrain. Themes woven throughout these musings include greater Saudi-Iran tensions, an increase in Saudi paranoia vis-à-vis the Iran threat, greater stress on the US-Saudi special relationship, and the notion that liberal political reforms are inevitable in the kingdom despite the staunch resistance of the Saudi establishment.

Foreign Policy’s recent article “Outraged in Riyadh,” touches upon the many recent strains on the US-Saudi alliance. Among Saudi gripes are the US’ lack of support for Egyptian dictator, Hosni Mubarak, and US/NATO flailing intervention in Libya to oust Gaddaffi. Despite the US’ hands-off attitude toward Bahrain, Saudi Arabia decreased oil production last month, despite its assurances to make up for Libya going offline. It seems like the long-time pals may be in for a rough 2011.

4.17 Meeting Report

Last week we met to narrow down our project topic. We decided on a comparative case study of Saudi Arabia and Algeria.
We will provide historical background (colonial, post-colonial, and nationalization periods), evaluate current policies and trends, and predict the impacts the two countries will have on the region as well as on the global market in the next decades.

Wikileaks: Saudi Arabia's production will never reach 12m bcd

The US fears that Saudi Arabia, the world's largest crude oil exporter, may not have enough reserves to prevent oil prices escalating, confidential cables from its embassy in Riyadh show.

The cables, released by WikiLeaks, urge Washington to take seriously a warning from a senior Saudi government oil executive that the kingdom's crude oil reserves may have been overstated by as much as 300bn barrels – nearly 40%.

The impact of oil decrease on human settlements

© Balfour & Associates 2003/2004

In the same kind of source, I will post in the next week an analysis of the 1972 Meadows & Al. report commissioned by the Club de Rome to Meadows's MIT research team.

Oil may run out by 2060 - HSBC global research report

HSBC does not mean to scare you in its latest report, but it does point out that we are facing a massive energy crunch. That’s because the bank is just not optimistic there is much oil left  in the world – in fact a mere 49 years of the black gold on current consumption levels.

Bristol's Peak Oil analysis report

Download here the 106 pages of Bristol's vision of how to locally politically deal with a lower and/or more expansive oil supply. I will upload an analysis of the key points of this report very soon for those who don't have the courage or the time to go through it don't worry!

http://www.bristol.gov.uk/ccm/cms-service/stream/asset/?asset_id=32277111

Global Market stability - Die Bundeswehr's perspectives

A study by a German military think tank has analyzed how "peak oil" might change the global economy. The internal draft document -- leaked on the Internet -- shows for the first time how carefully the German government has considered a potential energy crisis.

The Persian-Arabic Cold War

For three months, the Arab world has been awash in protests and demonstrations. It's being called an Arab Spring, harking back to the Prague Spring of 1968.

But comparison to the short-lived flowering of protests 40 years ago in Czechoslovakia is turning out to be apt in another way. For all the attention the Mideast protests have received, their most notable impact on the region thus far hasn't been an upswell of democracy. It has been a dramatic spike in tensions between two geopolitical titans, Iran and Saudi Arabia.

Direct URL

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http://menaoilresearch.blogspot.com

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EIA Data Overview: Iraq

Country Analysis Brief (taken from EIA website, www.eia.doe.gov/countries/cab.cfm?fips=IZ)

The issues Iraq faces concerning its natural resource use have been largely effected over the past three decades by war and civil unrest. In late June of 2010 the U.S. allocated $20 Billion to Iraq Oil and Gas sector to begin modernization of its oil infrastructure. Long-term reconstruction costs in Iraq are estimated to amount to $100 billion or more, according to reports by various U.S. government agencies, multilateral institutions and other international organization.

The Hydrocarbons Law, which would govern oil contracting and regulation and provide a legal framework for investment, has been under review in the Council of Ministers since October 26, 2008. Christopher Hitchins, in an article for Slate in March of 2007, offered a particularly sanguine view of the democratic potential of the passage of such legislation labeling it as "Federalized control over oil and gas with a distribution of revenue in proportion to the population of each province." Find that article here: www.slate.com/id/2161629/. Hitchins also cites a less optimistic view from Christian Parenti published a week later in the Nation: www.thenation.com/article/who-will-get-oil.