If this is al-Qaida, as seems very likely (ObL's home turf after all), I must admit it's a bit of a masterstroke: why waste time trying to do damage in Western locales when the source of much of their power - and your immediate troubles - is right at home? I wonder how the oil markets would react if these fellows succeeded in blowing up a pipeline or two?
Not a pleasant thought and I'd rather not consider it but it's no longer dismissable as alarmism or the stuff of thriller fiction.
.d.
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Latest al-Qa'ida attack puts Saudi oil industry in question
Despite assurances, analysts are likely to be wary for some time to come, reports Nicholas Pyke
30 May 2004
It is only a few days since Prince Turki al-Faisal, the Saudi Ambassador to Britain, wrote an angry letter to The Independent. Terrorism, he insisted, poses no serious threat to the peace and security of the oil-rich kingdom despite the pessimistic tone of British media commentary.
Prince Turki will no doubt be putting pen to paper once again in the next few days.
Yesterday saw the second al-Qa'ida-backed raid on the kingdom's oil infrastructure within the space of a month, with 16 killed, including one Briton, and a further 50 oil workers taken hostage.
Despite the kingdom's repeated assurances, the episode will trouble analysts for some time to come.
Saudi Arabia is the leader of Opec (the Organisation of Petroleum Exporting Countries), it is the world's biggest producer and it is sitting on a quarter of the globe's oil reserves. It is no exaggeration to say that the health of the global economy rests on the maintenance of supplies from this one Middle Eastern state.
The previous attack, which took place four weeks ago, may account for several dollars of the current price of a barrel of crude.
The Saudi Oil Minister, Ali al-Naimi, was due to meet Western oil executives yesterday to offer reassurance.
The world oil markets are already volatile, with prices hitting $41 (£22.35) a barrel in the past few weeks amid fears that a major attack could disrupt exports. The price has risen from $30 in just five months, tracking the escalation of violence in Iraq almost exactly.
According to Professor Andrew Oswald of Warwick University, oil prices at $50 a barrel would produce a world recession - although even this would not match the soaring prices of the 1970s.
External pressures are coming from the booming economies of China and India - currently building the world's longest single highway - which in the long term will upset global oil mathematics with the strength of their demand for crude.
But there are also domestic concerns. Mai Yamani, an expert on Saudi Arabia at the Royal Institute of International Affairs, says that political tension, rising violence and divisions among the princes of the ruling House of Saud, means that the country is in "chaos".
"Certainly the violence is going to increase ... It is the beginning of the end [for the regime]," Dr Yamani said.
The threat posed by rising levels of violence in the Middle East, and in Saudi Arabia in particular, are preoccupying analysts.
[...]
full at --
<http://news.independent.co.uk/world/middle_east/story.jsp?story=526361 >