Free Republic

Market share continues to be Saudi Arabia’s main concern—and not even $40 oil prices will make it give into peer pressure to cut production. Major oil producers have been trying to convince Saudi Arabia, the Organization of the Petroleum Exporting Countries’ biggest producer, to take the lead and cut production to stem the price declines. But output from the nation instead climbed to about 10.45 million barrels a day in July from 10.1 million in April, according to an estimate from Platts, even though West Texas Intermediate and Brent oil prices are down roughly 15% year to date on the...

In November 2014, the leaders of Saudi Arabia made one of the biggest bets in history. Their strategy was flawed, and they’ve already lost. In an OPEC meeting that month, Saudi Arabia announced it would maintain high oil-production levels despite falling prices. The Saudis were betting that by keeping prices low they could protect their market share and kill America’s energy renaissance—a rebirth driven largely by Texas, which produces 37% of America’s oil and 28% of its marketed natural gas. The Saudi strategy seemed to make sense. The conventional wisdom was that energy producers working in “tight” shale formations would...

President Barack Obama will host King Salman bin Abdulaziz Al Saud of Saudi Arabia at the White House next week for his first trip to Washington since ascending the throne. The visit, scheduled for September 4, comes just before Congress is scheduled to vote on the Iran deal, which Saudi Arabia has endorsed but expressed concern over.

The mastermind of the 1996 Khobar Towers terrorist attack that killed 19 Americans has been captured, U.S. and Saudi officials said on Aug. 26. The arrest of Ahmed al-Mughassil, who was described by the FBI in 2001 as the leader of the armed wing of the Saudi Hizbullah group, was one of the FBI’s most-wanted terrorists. The arrest concluded a nearly two-decade manhunt.

Despite low oil prices, Saudi Arabia is maintaining its investment in its oil industry. Saudi Aramco Chairman Khalid Al-Falih indicated in March that Saudi Aramco would not cut investment. James Crandell, a Cowen & Co. oil analyst cited in this article, who has tracked oil companies’ budgets for many years, estimates that Aramco and its Kuwaiti and UAE counterparts will increase their investment in oil exploration and production in 2015 by 4.5 percent to $38.1 billion. (If proportional to output, the Saudi share would be $24.5 billion). On it’s website, the Saudi Arabian General Investment Authority (SAGIA) identifies Saudi Arabia...

Offshore engineering company McDermott International’s stock shot up by more than 30 percent Wednesday after the company said it had landed a $1.5 billion-plus contract with Saudi Aramco. McDermott CEO David Dickson called the contract an important step in a turnaround for the Houston-based company, which as recently as 2013 had been struggling to build offshore platforms and support structures profitably. Investors sent the company’s shares up $1.03 to $4.49 in midday trading Thursday. “We had a tough time through the end of 2013; 2014 was a real turnaround,” Dickson said in an interview with FuelFix. He joined McDermott in...

Nine months after OPEC decided to leave its production target unchanged and pursue market share instead of trying to prop up prices, the group is facing a set of complex problems and decisions going forward. At first blush, the collapse of oil prices and the resiliency of U.S. shale appears to hand OPEC, and its most powerful member in Saudi Arabia, a stinging defeat. U.S. oil production has leveled off but has not dramatically declined. Meanwhile, oil prices are at their lowest levels since the financial crisis and the revenues of OPEC members have fallen precipitously along with the price...

Douglas-Westwood, an energy business strategy, research and commercial due diligence services provider, commented in its latest edition of DW Monday that low global crude prices have hit Saudi Arabia hard. With a considerable budget deficit, Saudi has been forced to begin borrowing from capital markets – $4 billion in July. The kingdom is highly reliant on oil – accounting for more than 90 percent of budget revenues. Cuts have not been made to capital expenditure and Saudi has engaged in an expensive conflict within Yemen. Consequently, the decision to ride out lower prices has put a huge strain on finances...

That’s the message from Saudi Arabia. Do not meddle in their internal affairs. If they want to lop off heads, leave them alone. If they want to flog their apostates, what’s that to you? And if they want to shred the hands of people reading the Bible, at least they’re not your hands. So shut up. Canadian officials heard that message loudly when they decided to criticize Saudi Arabia for torturing a blogger, Raif Badawi, with 1,000 lashes for criticizing the kingdom’s religious clerics. The Saudi ambassador told Canada’s National Assembly that his country “does not accept any form of...

Straight trippin': Saudi fatwa permits the use of hallucinogenic drugs during sex with ugly wives Saudi social media users have poured scorn on a fatwa that allowed young men married to ugly women to take drugs before intimate relations in order to have the delusion they are as beautiful as houris. The fatwa said that hallucinogenic drugs can be taken for 30 minutes during sexual intercourse and only by men who are less than 40 years old. The drugs can be used only in the evening, it added. “This is the ideal men who are unfortunately married with ugly-looking wives...

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It is too late for OPEC to stop the shale revolution. The cartel faces the prospect of surging US output whenever oil prices rise. If the oil futures market is correct, Saudi Arabia will start running into trouble within two years. It will be in existential crisis by the end of the decade. The contract price of US crude oil for delivery in December 2020 is currently $62.05, implying a drastic change in the economic landscape for the Middle East and the petro-rentier states. The Saudis took a huge gamble last November when they stopped supporting prices and opted instead...

Saudi Arabia arrested 431 people as part of a crackdown on a cluster of cells linked to the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria (ISIS) militant group, the kingdom’s Ministry of Interior (MOI) said. Authorities also thwarted seven mosque attacks that had been planned by the suspects in the capital Riyadh as well as the Eastern Province, MOI Spokesman Maj. Gen. Mansour Al Turki said in a press conference carried by Al Arabiya News Channel. Among the arrested were Saudi nationals and suspects from nine other nationalities, he said adding that the cluster of cells was divided by tasks and...

Mohammed Abdullah Ahmed of Saudi Arabia is more than 90-years old. He lives in a shabby randomly-built little house on the edge of a small remote village. “Ahmed’s home indicates as if we are still in the Stone Age,” the Arabic language daily 'Sabq' said, adding that its reporter visited the man at his primitive home on the fringes of the village near the Western Red Sea port of Al Qunfudah. “His home has no electricity. He suffers from cold in winter and from the scorching heat in summer. He lives in the dark away from people as he has...

RIYADH, Saudi Arabia (AP) — Former President Jimmy Carter has met with Saudi Arabia's Crown Prince Muqrin during a visit to the kingdom. The official Saudi Press Agency says the two met in a palace in the Saudi capital of Riyadh on Wednesday. The report says they discussed a number of topics but gave no details.

More HD combat footage from the war in Yemen surfaced. It is now more like an Saudi-Yemeni war since the battle was fought on Saudi soil as Houthi rebels attacked Saudi Arabian tanks and border posts with guerrilla warfare tactics using small rebels groups eqipted with small arms, RPGs and ATGM launchers to target Saudi tanks and border posts.

A group of Saudi students caught in a cheating scandal at a Montana college were offered flights home by their kingdom's diplomats to avoid the possibility of deportation or arrest, according to a cache of Saudi Embassy memos recently published by WikiLeaks and a senior official at the school involved. The students were in a ring of roughly 30 alleged cheaters at Montana Tech accused of having systematically forged grades by giving presents to a college employee. The cheating was discovered — and the staffer was fired — following an investigation made public in early 2012, but the memos reveal...

Saudi Arabia Monday beheaded a Syrian drug trafficker and a national convicted of murder, taking to 100 the number of executions in the kingdom this year. The number of executions has surged in 2015 compared with the 87 recorded by AFP for all of last year. But it is still far below the record 192 which rights group Amnesty International said took place in 1995. Syrian Ismael al-Tawm smuggled "a large amount of banned amphetamine pills into the kingdom", said an interior ministry statement carried by the official Saudi Press Agency. He was beheaded in the northern region of Jawf.

n the first such attack of the 10-week-old conflict in Yemen, Shiite Muslim rebels early Saturday launched three Scud missiles toward a large Saudi air base, the insurgents reported. The Saudis acknowledged the firing of one missile, which they said was shot down. The episode came as the United Nations is struggling to bring the two sides together for talks that are envisioned to begin June 14. Both sides appear to be seeking to shore up their gains in advance of any negotiations. The Houthis’ Masirah television reported the missile firings, which Saudi Arabian reports said were aimed at the...

The existence of a long waiting list for potential suicide bombers was revealed in a recent ISIS guidebook published online telling potential suicide bombers to be patient after their training period, as they’d have to deal with a long waiting list. As a result, militants are forced to spend months waiting for a suicide mission and are getting killed in battle — considered to be a less noble way to die. Kamil Abu Sultan ad-Daghestani, a pro-Islamic State preacher from Dagestan, Russia, made the accusations in a recent post on the Russian language jihadi website Qonah claiming that rich Saudi...