OPEC requests aid if oil use wanes

[Desmond Hawkins]

What CNN says

The part of the article that says Saudi Arabia requests increased aid if the west switches to renewables really ticks me off. They hold the west hostage for decades, blackmailing us over foreign policy, and now they want compensation if in the future they cannot do this anymore? Absolutely ridiculous. They should make enough money in the latter part of this decade anyways, when most remaining cheap oil will be found in the Gulf.

 

[Ohwell]

The market for exhaustible fuel will grow well into the century, perhaps for several centuries. Even if principal buyer nations switch to clean power for electricity, the industrial sector will continue to buy the oil for fuel. OPEC partners can also use their income to create a modern petrochemical industry, as well as make many, many other products using oil. OPEC is in no serious danger, it just has to adapt to the changing market.

 

[luiz]

I agree with you Sobieski, personally I would be very pleased to see the OPEC go bankrupt. The damn 70's Oil crisis ended what was known as "brazilian miracle" a GDP growth rate of over 10% a year. The late 70's, the 80's and the early 90's were completely lost decades for my country, and we can thank the OPEC for that.

 

[Desmond Hawkins]

Ohwell, whether it goes bancrupt or not is not the point. The fact that it expects aid, after wasting endless billions on the engrandizement of their leaders, and on pointless wars, while blackmailing the west. It is the nerve of the Saudis that makes me mad. The west should begin to take itself off the oil drug as soon as possible, and let them lose their cash cow.

 

[Ohwell]

Er yes, I was trying to say that OPEC doesnt need any aid, just some changing.

 

[Desmond Hawkins]

Originally posted by Ohwell
Er yes, I was trying to say that OPEC doesnt need any aid, just some changing.

Now that is more like it. I am simply saying that just because they provide us (well you, we have our own) with oil, OPEC has no special place within our hearts, and should expect a swift kick in the ass, not a kiss goodbye, when the renewable economy comes online in a few decades.

 

[Archer 007]

Laughable. Without a need for oil, the West wont have a need for the likes of the Saudis.

 

[The Yankee]

Oh God...hopefully we'll get off our oil dependence in one fell swoop to eliminate any OPEC blackmail power. What many of its members nations have done with OPEC and its money is disgusting, at best.

 

[The Iron Fist]

I guess this means the Wahhabism export industry is in trouble.

 

[h4ppy]

We will give them aid after oil use declines if they give us free oil before oil use ends. I wonder if they would agree to that deal, I doubt it.

 

[Pontiuth Pilate]

Arabs need to diversify... Oil is not the long-term answer to their economic problems. They should be using oil money NOW as capital for infrastructure projects that will help them catch up with the West. Again, I have to bring up Dubai as an example. Twenty or thirty years ago it could have been any desolate spot in the Empty Quarter of the Arabian Desert. Today you have to look pretty close at the people walking between the skyscrapers to tell it apart from, say, Hong Kong, Miami, or Singapore.

That's what can be done with strong, dynamic leadership, a free market, and bucketloads of oil money Unfortunately, most Arab states are simply throwing that money away.

It can't go on forever.

 

[FrantzX]

I think all Americans, no matter the race, creed, or political affililation can agree on this response:

**** them.

 

[Immortal]

errm.... thats for sure....

 

[Desmond Hawkins]

Originally posted by Pontiuth Pilate

That's what can be done with strong, dynamic leadership, a free market, and bucketloads of oil money Unfortunately, most Arab states are simply throwing that money away.

It can't go on forever.

But even then, most of the construction was done using foreign contractors, using foreign talent, bought with oil. Dubai has not managed to diversify either.

Until Arabs are able to undergo actual modernization, rather than short-term buying sprees with oil money, their nations will go nowhere.

 

[Enemy Ace]

I will embrace the day the former OPEC nations suffer, with the exception of Venezuela. They are already suffering and unlike the others, will enjoy being in American orbit, which shall somewhat shield them from too terrible a fate. Without oil, the rest of the OPEC nations are merely deserts.

 

[Tassadar]

Originally posted by The Iron Fist
I guess this means the Wahhabism export industry is in trouble.

They can always export sand and a more added value to it, glass, if they know how to make it.

 

[TrailblazingScot]

Let them eat sand.

 

[Kinniken]

Originally posted by FrantzX
I think all Americans, no matter the race, creed, or political affililation can agree on this response:

**** them.

Not only American! I believe Europeans feels very much the same, and judging from luiz's post so do Brazilians. In fact, so do pretty much the entire planet
The oil-rich Gulf states should not get any help until they start to democratise and use the money they have sensibly. To think that a region of the world that is sitting on by far the richest natural resources on the planet would manage to stay that poor and that backward while exhorting a huge price from the rest of the world for their oil is maddening... The Al Saudi and the rest of them are wasting the most amazing opportunity any ex-colonial part of the world had to develop itself.
Just think of what countries like Taiwan, South Korea or Thailand would have done with such resources...

 

[Desmond Hawkins]

Well it appears as though we are in absolute, unanimous agreement here.

 

[Kentonio]

Aye, never thought that would happen.