Sheikh Ahmed Zaki Yamani, the former Saudi oil minister, said, "The Stone Age came to an end not for a lack of stones and the oil age will end, but not for a lack of oil." He didn't say it because he suddenly became an environmentalist. He said it because he wanted the OPEC (and other oil producers) to act in such a way to keep the world dependent on oil, so that anachronistic monarchical government will survive on oil rents in the Persian Gulf.
Sheikh Yamani's 2001 interview, from which the aforementioned remark is taken, says a lot about the Saudi oil price strategy: keep oil prices low in the interest of diminishing the incentives for conversion to more ecological production and consumption in the rest of the world. The Saudi ruling class can afford to settle for cheaper prices than the leaders of Iran, Venezuela, and the like because the Saudi ruling class, being aristocratic rulers of artificial states many of whose workers are foreigners with few rights, do not have to answer to social, political, and economic demands from below, of the sort that all leaders of real republican democracies have to face. Cheaper prices have an added benefit of diminishing the political power of ideological competitors to Wahhabi theocracy. <http://www.planetark.org/avantgo/dailynewsstory.cfm?newsid=8054> INTERVIEW - Yamani says OPEC accelerating end of the oil era Story by Richard Mably Story Date: 5/9/2000 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . TECHNOLOGY TO SQUEEZE OPEC Within 20 years, he predicts, technology will have cut deep into demand for transport fuels. Crude will slump even more heavily than the single-digit prices seen during the last glut, in 1998. This year's oil price scare will feed rival non-OPEC production, suppress demand and, most damagingly for OPEC, breed new fuel technologies. He sees hybrid engines for automobiles and hydrogen fuel-cells drastically cutting the consumption of gasoline while big new finds lift crude flows from non-OPEC nations. "Technology is a real enemy for OPEC. Technology will reduce consumption and increase production from areas outside OPEC." "The real victims will be countries like Saudi Arabia with huge reserves which they can do nothing with - the oil will stay in the ground for ever." OPEC, said Yamani, had failed to learn the lessons of the series of gluts and shortages which have marked its turbulent history. Its leading negotiator during the oil price rises of OPEC's heyday, Yamani says his warnings against pushing crude too high went unheeded. "I will never forget. It was 1979. I was in Caracas and I said that at this price - it was $28 a barrel at the time - OPEC production will drop, OPEC countries will fight each other. I said production has to be raised to lower prices. They said I was crazy." While Saudi Arabia, sitting on 100 years of reserves, now favours prices no higher than $25 a barrel, fellow OPEC members remain keen to squeeze their customers for as much short-term revenue as possible. "There are some members in OPEC who always tried to resist extra production - like Venezuela, Iran, Libya. In OPEC, from day one that has not changed," said Yamani. -- Yoshie <http://montages.blogspot.com/> <http://mrzine.org> <http://monthlyreview.org/>
