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Saudi Oil Minister Ali al-Naimi met U.S. Deputy Energy Secretary Elizabeth Sherwood-Randall on Tuesday in Riyadh where they discussed oil markets, the official Saudi Press Agency (SPA) reported. SPA gave no specific details about the meeting in a brief statement but said the officials looked into cooperation on energy and environmental issues, climate change, solar energy use and mutual investments. A U.S. energy department spokesman said in addition to those areas, the two officials discussed global oil markets. The trip was Sherwood-Randall's first as deputy energy secretary. "She chose to make her first visit to Saudi Arabia given our strategic...

Saudi Arabia has provided $60 million in direct support for the Palestinian Authority’s (PA) budget, Saudi Arabia’s ambassador to Egypt Ahmad Abdulaziz Qattan said Tuesday, according to the WAFA news agency. Qattan reportedly said that the Saudi Fund for Development had transferred $60 million to the PA Finance Ministry’s bank account. The Saudi diplomat noted in a press release that amount covers Saudi Arabia’s financial contribution to the PA’s budget for October, November and December 2014. The total PA budget for 2014 was estimated at $4.21 billion with a $1.25 billion deficit; when the $350 million deficit in development budget

I've been in the oil patch for close to 30 years. During that time, I have seen oil price go down to about $10 per barrel, and I have seen the price rise to over $100 per barrel. I have seen the price swing for no reason at all. I have heard different bogeymen being blamed for changes in the oil price. Supply and demand are certainly part of the oil price equation, but speculation has been a major price driver for at least the last couple of years, beyond the S&D factors. Right now, the Saudis are being blamed...

Saudi blogger and activist Raif Badawi, sentenced to 10 years in prison and 1,000 lashes for insulting Islam, is set to receive the first set of 50 lashes tomorrow. Badawi will be flogged after Friday prayers tomorrow and continuously over a period of 20 weeks as the remainder of his sentence is carried out, according to Amnesty International.

the seizures came after clashes broke out Thursday night in the eastern city of Marib between tribesmen and army troops. They say the tribesmen suspected that the soldiers were heading to join the Shiite rebels who have been gathering outside of Marib for several weeks ... The Shiite rebels known as the Houthis are backed by ousted President Ali Abdullah Saleh. They have overrun the capital and other cities in a power grab that has plunged Yemen into turmoil. ... Sunni al-Qaida has recently intensified its attacks against the expansionist Shiite Houthis, especially in Yemen's predominantly Sunni central region.

Saudi police have arrested a man wanted in connection with a 2011 protest movement organised by Shiite residents of the kingdom's restive Eastern Province ... Muntadher Ali Saleh al-Sabity .. is one of 23 Saudis wanted in connection with protests and violence in Eastern Province, home to more than two million Shiites in the Sunni-majority kingdom. The group, some of whom have been detained or killed, is accused of acting "on behalf of foreign parties" -- a reference to Iran, which authorities have blamed in the past for fomenting unrest among Saudi Shiites.

Saudi Arabia's national airline is allegedly planning to separate male and female passengers on its flights, in accordance to strict rules enforced by the Gulf kingdom. Gulf media report that Saudia will keep men and women segregated onboard, unless they are close relatives. The move follows a spate of complaints from male fliers unwilling to allow other males to sit next to their wives and other female family members.

The 93-year old King of Saudi Arabia was sent to hospital on Wednesday for “medical checks” according to the Royal Court. King Abdullah bin Abdulaziz, who has ruled Saudi Arabia since the death of his half-brother King Fahd in 2005, was admitted to the King Abdulaziz Medical City in Riyadh, the latest in numerous trips to hospital by the aging monarch in recent years. The King underwent two operations in October 2011 and November 2012 due to "ligament slackening" in the upper back. The news of his entry to hospital prompted a 5 percent fall in Saudi Arabia’s main equities...

Authorities on the alert to ensure only men attend much-anticipated football match in Saudi Arabia. Saudi Arabian authorities have intensified security around a stadium in the Red Sea city of Jeddah to ensure no woman could sneak in to watch a football match. ... Saudi Arabia has a very strict policy regarding female attendance at sports matches. Permissions are needed to allow foreign women to watch the matches in which their home teams play.

Two Saudi women detained for nearly a month in defiance of a ban on females driving were referred on Thursday to a court established to try terrorism cases ... The Specialized Criminal Court, to which their cases were referred, was established in the capital Riyadh to try terrorism cases but has also tried and handed long prison sentences to a number of human rights workers, peaceful dissidents, activists and critics of the government. For example, this year it sentenced a revered Shiite cleric Sheikh Nimr al-Nimr, a vocal critic of the government, to death for sedition and sentenced a prominent...

Saudi Arabian Oil Minister Ali Naimi sat down with MEES on 21 December in Abu Dhabi and gave his fullest explanation yet of Saudi thinking in pushing for an OPEC rollover on 27 November. Yesterday, excerpts of the interview were widely quoted in the mainstream press, moving the price of oil. Today, for the first time, the full interview is being published beyond the MEES subscriber base on Oilpro. Will Saudi Arabia Not Cut Production If The Russians Do Not Cut? First of all, why did we decide not to reduce production? I will tell you why. Is it reasonable...

Saudi Oil Minister Says Russia Doesn't 'Deserve Market Share' Jim Edwards Dec. 22, 2014, 12:10 PM Saudi Oil Minister Ali Naimi really got the world's attention in an interview he gave to the energy journal Middle East Economic Survey (MEES). We told you earlier that Naimi said the Saudis don't care how low the price of oil goes: "Whether it goes down to $20, $40, $50, $60, it is irrelevant." What's interesting though is Naimi's rationale for not caring. Basically, he told MEES, the Saudis can afford not to care about the low price of oil. /snip Everyone is asking...

Despite last week's bold proclamation, Saudi Arabia cannot keep producing crude oil and drive the price into oblivion if it wants to maintain its social services. Today, I talked with Regina Mayor, the advisor for the consultant practice at KPMG, who said she doesn't expect this price decline to continue. "The real break even for a lot of these countries is not what they're finding in extraction and transportation costs," Mayor said. "The real price for oil is what are the expectations of their populace in terms of commitments the government has made in terms of subsidies." The fear has...

I can't think of a tax I have even been for so this is new ground for me. Think about a tax on imported oil. Discuss.

The Saudi military Intelligence reportedly had arrested two senior F-16 pilots whom turned down their missions in late October, expressing their utmost resentment toward their country’s alliance with the United States against to what they see as “innocent and defenseless Iraqi civilians” and accusing the Saudi regime to be too docile to White House “vicious” whims. White House officials and CIA had informed the Saudis that their American-trained pilots are in fact jettisoning their bombs and ammunitions over inconsequential or totally unpopulated areas and then returning to their bases in K.S.A. A growing number of Saudis including high-ranking army officers...

A new law in Saudi Arabia banning ‘tempting eyes’ has become the latest example of female oppression in the country. The law, which states that women with alluring eyes will be forced to wear a full veil, has been branded ‘stupid’ by dissenters and roundly criticised on social media, aina.org reports. Sheikh Motlab al Nabet, spokesman of the Saudi Arabian Committee for the Promotion of Virtue and the Prevention of Vice, said they ‘had the right’ to force women to cover their face. ‘The men of the committee will interfere to force women to cover their eyes, especially the tempting...

only women over 30 would be allowed to drive and they would need permission from a male relative — usually a husband or father, but lacking those, a brother or son. They would be allowed to drive from 7 a.m. to 8 p.m. on Saturday through Wednesday and noon to 8 p.m. on Thursday and Friday. It wasn’t immediately clear why the restrictions would be different Thursday and Friday ... The conditions would also require that a woman driver wear conservative dress and no makeup, the official said. Within cities, they can drive without a male relative in the car,...

Only by overlooking important forces in markets and politics can anyone assert that Saudi Arabia is letting crude prices fall mainly to extinguish competition from North American shale oil. With oil, the Saudi regime always takes the long view. With security, however, its motivations are more immediate. The kingdom faces unusually intense threats: Islamic State (IS) militancy in Iraq and Syria, the chance that Iran won’t agree by a Nov. 24 deadline to suspend its nuclear ambitions, terrorist insurrections from restive Yemen, durability of the menacing government of Bashar Al-Assad in Damascus. Falling oil prices hurt the IS and Iran,...

Oil prices tumbled to their lowest point in more than two years after Saudi Arabia unexpectedly cut prices for crude sold to the U.S., likely paving the way for further declines and adding to pressure on American energy producers. Meanwhile, Saudi Arabia raised the prices for its oil in other locations, including Asia, where the country had cut its prices for four consecutive months.

Recently, the Saudi ambassador in Turkey acknowledged that before the Unite States launched its airstrikes against the so-called Islamic state in Iraq and the Levant (ISIL), the Saudi embassy in Ankara provided the Saudi nationals who previously joined ISIL ranks and later defected and wished to return to home with passports and identification documents. The Saudi embassy also admitted that it housed many repentant former jihadists inside the Saudi compound in Istanbul or rented safe houses for them in downtown Istanbul. As a matter of fact, it seems not so much surprising to hear that a country provides consular services...