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IPFS News Link • Saudi Arabia

The Coming World of 'Peak Oil Demand,' Not 'Peak Oil'

• AntiWar.com

Iran, at the moment, remains so, but the Saudi royals, increasingly unnerved, have been steering their country erratically into the region's chaos. The kingdom is now led by a decrepit 80-year-old monarch who, in commonplace meetings, has to be fed his lines by teleprompter. Meanwhile, his 30-year-old son, Deputy Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman, who has gained significant control over both the kingdom's economic and military decision-making, launched a rash anti-Iranian war in Yemen, heavily dependent on air power. It is not only Washington-backed but distinctly in the American mode of these last years: brutal yet ineffective, never-ending, a boon to the spread of terror groups, and seeded with potential blowback.

Meanwhile, in a cheap-oil, belt-tightening moment, in an increasingly edgy country, the royals are reining in budgets and undermining the good life they were previously financing for many of their citizens. The one thing they continue to do is pump oil – their only form of wealth – as if there were no tomorrow, while threatening further price-depressing rises in oil production in the near future. And that's hardly been the end of their threats. While taking on the Iranians (and the Russians), they have also been lashing out at the local opposition, executing a prominent dissident Shiite cleric among others and even baring their teeth at Washington.


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