[claman]

It's pretty cool they get some of their own medicine.

[careinke]

The start of Saudi's "Arab Spring."

[claman]

Careinke : Or maybe the collapse of orthodox islamism.

[vox_mundi]

Let the beheadings begin ...

Saudi king vows to fight religious extremists after bombings

The king of Saudi Arabia warned his country would strike with an "iron hand" against people who preyed on youth vulnerable to religious extremism, a day after suicide bombers struck three cities in an apparently coordinated campaign of attacks.

In a speech marking Eid al-Fitr, the holiday that celebrates the end of the Islamic holy month of Ramadan, King Salman said a major challenge facing Saudi Arabia was preserving hope for youth who faced the risk of radicalization.

"We will strike with an iron hand those who target the minds and thoughts... of our dear youth," Salman, 80, said.

Saudis were rattled by the rare, high-profile attack.

Militant attacks on Medina are unprecedented. The city is home to the second most sacred site in Islam, a mosque built in the 7th century by the Prophet Mohammed, the founder of Islam, which also houses his tomb.

Attacks on Mecca, the holiest place in Islam, have been extremely rare. The Al Saud ruling family considers itself the protectors of both sites. Islamic State says the Saudi rulers are apostates and has declared its intention to topple them.

[claman]

It sounds good, but it is hard to believe that the old ties between Whahhabism and the Sauds should be broken. Especialy now when Shia and Iran is rather aggessive. I would like a further explanation of why the saudies would deny their old relations with the wahhabs.

[careinke]

Careinke : Or maybe the collapse of orthodox islamism.

I'd take that.

[careinke]

It sounds good, but it is hard to believe that the old ties between Whahhabism and the Sauds should be broken. Especialy now when Shia and Iran is rather aggessive. I would like a further explanation of why the saudies would deny their old relations with the wahhabs.

The Saudari seven always balanced the National Guard, the Military, and the religious police (matawain), against each other. This has kept the Sauds in power, and they are extremely good at it. They also pay off the Matawa to try and avoid terrorism act in country. In addition, the law is Sharia Law. There is no separation of religion and state. The religion is the state.

With that background, let me shed some light on your question. The Royal family is under some severe pressure:

1. The Saudari seven are quickly dying off, with no clear lines of succession, nor any Sharia laws to guide them.

2. One of the tenants of the kings power is, he is "The protector of the two holy mosques." Which he has now failed to do.

3. There is a very high unemployment rate among the youth, leaving them angry at the royal family and more open to radical Islam.

4. The economy is in a shambles.

5. They have mined all the ancient water reservoirs in the Al Kharj area and have had to eliminate grain farming as a water conservation measure.

6. The price of oil has been low.

7. Daesh see weakness, and has turned on the royal family. If they succeed, they will control the two holy mosques and Haj. Basically, everything holy in Islam, with the exception of Jerusalem.

So bottom line, the Royal Family has been paying protection money and services to the Wahhabi sect for years and now they have been stabbed in the back. I don't see the backlash being very pleasant.

There is a Saudi story that goes something like this:

My brother was weak, so I bought him a bow and arrow. I taught him to shoot, and we practiced and practiced until eventually he became even better than me. Then he shot me.

It sort of fits.

[Cid_Yama]

Revolution's in the air.

The House of Saud has never been popular in the Muslim world. Yes, it has enjoyed esteem as a result of its significant wealth; yes, the Wahabi strain of Islam has grown significantly across the planet as a result of its patronage, but the notorious excesses of the Sheikhs have passed into myth and folklore. Amongst mainstream Sunnis, the hardline ideology it promotes and the debauchery its members indulge in were overlooked because it deployed so much of its oil wealth in supporting Muslim communities and restoring a sense of prestige lost in the process of colonisation.

As far as the wider Muslim world is concerned, the Saudis derive their legitimacy from their role as “Guardians of the Shrines,” maintaining the most sacred sites of Islam in Medina and Mecca and enabling the two million people who go on Hajj each year to complete the journey safely.

This year many of them were not able to do so. Instead they died in a crush apparently caused after crowds were diverted to enable a Saudi royal to complete the ritual of “stoning the devil” from the back of his limousine. Not only that, but the Saudis initially blamed the crowds themselves, saying that they had not followed instructions and have been very disingenuous about the number killed, with some reports suggesting that it reaches well into the thousands. Right down to the fact that the dead were buried in mass graves, the whole Hajj incident was proof, if any were needed, that the House of Saud are failing in their custodianship of the Shrines.

The only things they have left to secure their continued control over those sacred sites, and the legitimacy they bestow upon their rule and the ultra austere, anachronistic and ideologically genocidal creed of Wahabism their ability to protect the “purity of the faith” and of course, those famous bottomless coffers.

With the price of crude low and dropping, the Kingdom has already been forced to begin cutting subsidies to its population.

The Gulf States are gearing up for a war with their own people, a second Arab Spring. Saudi, the UAE, Bahrain and Qatar are putting in place all the instruments needed for sustained repression of the majority by a small ruling class. They are doing so because the low oil price is making it very clear what a Gulf future without the exceptionalising power of oil would look like.

Saudi Arabia Uncovered

[Tanada]

Anyone care to explain how bombing in Saudi Arabia caused the price of oil contracts to fall $2/bbl yesterday?

[rockdoc123]

Anyone care to explain how bombing in Saudi Arabia caused the price of oil contracts to fall $2/bbl yesterday?

over the past year or so the market has become increasingly calm to political unrest. They focus on supply and demand and the various machinations that will affect it. Back in the period when oil stayed around $100/bbl for 3 or so years it was the exact opposite, in the face of increased supply and slowing demand any little political hiccup worldwide would send prices higher regardless of the supply demand scenario.

So right now the market is focussing on the potential fallout of Brexit which they imagine might decrease overall oil demand. As well Libya's two opposing authorities have agreed to sign a deal which will see one government rule. This is a potential big increase in oil supply in short order if the deal doesn't fall apart.

[vox_mundi]

Must not look into the mirror ... Must blame the other ...

Op-ed from al arabiya Which of Saudi’s enemies orchestrated the triple bombing?

... All three attacks were coordinated in the style of Al-Qaeda and its offshoot, the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria (ISIS), but unlike their usual operations, these would be viewed as failures from their perspectives. In all instances, the suicide belts were exploded outside the apparently targeted buildings, and the death count from all three is lower than we have witnessed in the past.

No one died in Jeddah apart from Khan. Two were killed by the explosion outside a mosque in Qatif, and four security guards died in the parking lot close to the Prophet’s Mosque. Are we therefore to believe that the merchants of terror who have killed tens of thousands in Iraq, Syria, Libya, Egypt, Afghanistan, Paris and Belgium have lost the plot? I do not think so.

Media fingers may be pointing towards ISIS as the likely perpetrator of these heinous crimes, and indeed it considers the kingdom an enemy. However, for the group to explode the Prophet’s Mosque would be a contradiction in terms. It would be obliged to consider a name change.

I smell a false-flag operation here. There is another foe of Saudi Arabia, and like ISIS, it has ambitions to dominate the region and become the guardian of the holy sites in Makkah and Madinah. This is a wealthy rogue state whose leadership is working to advance the Day of Judgment, as evidenced by videos it disseminates to that effect.

Evaluate the motives and capabilities of all the groups and states out to harm the kingdom, and follow the money. No devout Muslim would have consented to bomb Islam’s second-holiest site, so there is likely to be a paperless hawala cash trail.

What does it mean that terrorists will bomb even Muhammad's burial place?

[evilgenius]

With the current glut in world oil there are plenty of people who have let go of peak oil as a driving force in world affairs. I'm not one of them. To me, the glut is the predictable result of prices rising so high, being derived from a more purely conventionally extracted market, that so-called unconventional sources became affordable to produce. Before fracking there were the large actors, those with huge reserves, and the smaller actors, those with some off-shore or some small fields. It was generally accepted that the smaller actors would peter out at their own pace, and that only the large actors would be left on the scene. It was the view that, eventually, we would be left with only the large Middle Eastern states and Venezuela and Nigeria. The assumption was that Saudi Arabia would be a key player at that time.

Fracking in the US changed that. The US has proven that they can produce as much oil as Saudi Arabia, on a daily basis. It took high oil prices for that to be realized. Suffice it to say that, for the near term, fracking has introduced another kind of actor. As a result, there is too much oil for high oil prices to be sustained.

In the past, Saudi Arabia has always been considered the swing producer. As such, they have been the de facto market maker when it comes to oil prices. Like General Motors, who were always able to produce cars more cheaply than any other manufacturer, they called the shots in terms of pricing. This time around, that has changed. The introduction of another actor has destabilized the former order. This new actor, the fracking actor, responds more significantly to high oil prices because it derives its capital from that scenario. Also, although it may be weak (experiencing many bankruptcies) before lower oil prices, because it relies upon the financial realm for much of its existence, and not just oil revenue, it has proven to have staying power in the face of lower prices. The fracking actor's creditors are happy with high output and the promise of better prices to come, or they are happy with bankruptcy, so to speak. This thinking will only be exacerbated by the recessions yet to come, brought about by the constantly swaying dynamics of both peak oil and slowing world growth. Fracking will endure.

Saudi Arabia doesn't enjoy the same edge when it comes to enduring this glut's low oil prices. This time around the Saudis are suffering under the weight of a highly developed largess economy that became the norm because nobody expected low prices would come that were not the result of Saudi provocation. Alas, this glut was not of their making. Thus, they will have to take drastic measures to deal with it. They are going to cut government spending. They are going to hack at the largess.

I think the Saudi measures to deal with the current glut will create a successful, to one degree or another, private sector in Saudi Arabia. This will be good for the Saudis. It will be bad for the world, in about fifteen or twenty years. I think that because I believe the introduction of a successful private sector in Saudi Arabia will result in the operation of the Export Land Model to a much more drastic extent than it would have under the regime of government largess. The extent of the impact of the Export Land Model under the regime of government largess was always baked into the former assumptions in regards to the essential position the kingdom would have at the point in the future when only the original large actors were left. The impact of a successful private sector has not been baked into those assumptions. When the time comes the Saudis won't have very much oil left over, after what goes into their own economy, to supply the world with anything like what was expected under the old model.

Fracking won't last any longer than they can wring the various formations at high expense of what oil is in them, the fifteen or twenty years I mentioned. It will, however, last long enough to ensure this. The Saudis will never be able to entertain a largess style economy again. Every time they try it the frackers will produce more. It will be a spiral towards a more and more efficient private sector in Saudi Arabia, probably a bumpy looking spiral, but a spiral in retrospect.

[Paulo1]

re:
I think the Saudi measures to deal with the current glut will create a successful, to one degree or another, private sector in Saudi Arabia.

How? ME culture women do all the work while men sit around, smoke, and drink mint tea. Saudi Culture, Saudis sit around and collect Govt stipends while a few highly paid, but mostly exploited and under-paid foreigners do all the work.

Too many people, and no resources but oil will soon equal violent unrest, crackdowns, and ultimate upheavel. I think they're screwed.

[evilgenius]

It begins by cutting pay. They can't fire people right now. Too many social relationships are tied up in the who's and why's of employment. When they reach the point where they can fire people, then you'll know.

[vtsnowedin]

It comes down to how real their stated reserves are. If they really have the forty odd year supply at current production levels left then fracking in America or anywhere else will not bring them down. If on the other hand there largest fields are about to water out then they are screwed.
I suspect the powers that be in KSA know the truth of the matter and have planned accordingly in spite of their recent apparent ineptitude.
America producing more oil the KSA means nothing as long as the USA is consuming twice as much as we produce. It's not your production that counts but how much of it you can export. Export land model and all that.

[KaiserJeep]

Maybe it's just my ignorance of petroleum technology. I know that Standard Oil drilled some of the earliest oil wells in the US and that many of these depleted conventional wells are again productive due to the fracking technology. Obviously they will then produce for a while and then decline again.

Can not the oil wells in KSA, already declining in a conventional sense, also be fracked, and will not the ME still be productive after the wells in the USA again peak and decline?

After all, the glut won't last forever, and the peak means that half the total oil has been produced, it does not mean that the end of oil is near.

[StarvingLion]

There was a book out last year by two Saudis called: 'Opec in a Shale World: Where to next?"

I'm currently reading it but it seems a pro-establishment piece. Basically says shale is here to stay and that shale oil companies are the new swing producer. Has a section on Peak Oil and dismisses it with the argument that technology (eg. 4-D Seismic) will save the day. Also, a brief blurb on the water injection on the perimeter of Ghawar. Again, said water cut was a growing problem in the late 90's but that technology solved it.

The authors backgrounds were mostly finance and economics and didn't seem to really have a clue.

[Tanada]

Maybe it's just my ignorance of petroleum technology. I know that Standard Oil drilled some of the earliest oil wells in the US and that many of these depleted conventional wells are again productive due to the fracking technology. Obviously they will then produce for a while and then decline again.

Can not the oil wells in KSA, already declining in a conventional sense, also be fracked, and will not the ME still be productive after the wells in the USA again peak and decline?

After all, the glut won't last forever, and the peak means that half the total oil has been produced, it does not mean that the end of oil is near.

For whatever it is worth here is my understanding. Oil bearing rock formations consist of pore spaces that hold tiny droplets of oil. Where the pore spaces are large and naturally interconnected the oil flows easily from pore to pore until it reaches a well bore and is extracted. Where pore spaces are smaller and less well connected it takes more time and effort to get the oil droplets to flow to the well bore for extraction. In 'tight shale' formations the pore spaces are very small and the inter connections between pores is low or even completely absent.

Oil reservoirs in Saudi Arabia are mostly large well connected pores so the oil flows out with very little effort. This makes oil extraction in Saudi Arabia incredibly cheap compared to conventional wells in other places.

Oil reservoirs in North Dakota shale fields are the opposite, very small pores with very low connectivity that require fracking to get high production rates. The cracks caused by fracking connect the trillions of tiny pores together in a path that leads to the well bore and allow the oil and gas to flow easily.

In the depleted conventional reservoirs where Fracking has revived things in the USA fracking has made cracks that connect the pore spaces together more directly to the well bore making it easier to extract the oil that was still trapped in pores with poor connectivity to the natural pathways. In Saudi Arabia Fracking could do the same thing for those fields with average pore size and connectivity, but their best fields have excellent connectivity already. Fracking wouldn't do much to help in a field that already has excellent connections between pores and might even damage the rock in a way that reduces the flow of oil through the natural paths instead of improving it.

I am sure the oil experts around here will pipe up if I messed up that explanation of why reservoirs in KSA are not likely to flow better from Fracking technology in the future.

[Ibon]

Montequest's tagline comes to mind

A Saudi saying, "My father rode a camel. I drive a car. My son flies a jet-plane. His son will ride a camel."

[C8]

Maybe it's just my ignorance of petroleum technology. I know that Standard Oil drilled some of the earliest oil wells in the US and that many of these depleted conventional wells are again productive due to the fracking technology. Obviously they will then produce for a while and then decline again.

Can not the oil wells in KSA, already declining in a conventional sense, also be fracked, and will not the ME still be productive after the wells in the USA again peak and decline?

After all, the glut won't last forever, and the peak means that half the total oil has been produced, it does not mean that the end of oil is near.

For whatever it is worth here is my understanding. Oil bearing rock formations consist of pore spaces that hold tiny droplets of oil. Where the pore spaces are large and naturally interconnected the oil flows easily from pore to pore until it reaches a well bore and is extracted. Where pore spaces are smaller and less well connected it takes more time and effort to get the oil droplets to flow to the well bore for extraction. In 'tight shale' formations the pore spaces are very small and the inter connections between pores is low or even completely absent.

Oil reservoirs in Saudi Arabia are mostly large well connected pores so the oil flows out with very little effort. This makes oil extraction in Saudi Arabia incredibly cheap compared to conventional wells in other places.

Oil reservoirs in North Dakota shale fields are the opposite, very small pores with very low connectivity that require fracking to get high production rates. The cracks caused by fracking connect the trillions of tiny pores together in a path that leads to the well bore and allow the oil and gas to flow easily.

In the depleted conventional reservoirs where Fracking has revived things in the USA fracking has made cracks that connect the pore spaces together more directly to the well bore making it easier to extract the oil that was still trapped in pores with poor connectivity to the natural pathways. In Saudi Arabia Fracking could do the same thing for those fields with average pore size and connectivity, but their best fields have excellent connectivity already. Fracking wouldn't do much to help in a field that already has excellent connections between pores and might even damage the rock in a way that reduces the flow of oil through the natural paths instead of improving it.

I am sure the oil experts around here will pipe up if I messed up that explanation of why reservoirs in KSA are not likely to flow better from Fracking technology in the future.

As an educator I would like to commend you for your easy to follow explanation- its strange how rarely you see this kind of writing on blogs