Bush’s Oil Gamble Slips Up

Iraq/Saudi Arabia

Bush’s Oil Gamble Slips Up

ONE REASON for the US-led invasion and occupation of Iraq
was to reduce the West’s dependency on Saudi Arabian oil. With the world’s
second largest oil reserves on tap, imperialism viewed Iraq as a more secure
fuel energy source then that provided by the neighbouring House of Saud.

However, a growing insurgency against the occupation in
Iraq has seen oil production fail to recover to its pre-war levels. Combined
with a huge increase in demand for fuel oil from China and India, and low oil
stocks in the US, the price of crude oil has exceeded $40 a barrel in recent
weeks.

In real terms this is still far below the oil price hike
of 1973 which followed the Arab-Israeli war, and which pushed the world
economy into a recession. Nonetheless, the increasing attacks in the Saudi
Kingdom linked to Osama bin Laden’s al-Qa’ida’s network – aimed at disrupting
the oil industry – is contributing to a ‘terrorist premium’ on oil prices,
despite the Saudi regime pledging to increase output.

The oil-rich state of Saudi Arabia is run by a corrupt
semi-feudal monarchy that bans political parties and trade unions and allows
no free media. The regime has expounded an extreme right-wing Islamic ideology
while maintaining close political links to the US and the Bush family in
particular.

However, the country’s vast financial reserves have been
eaten up, firstly through bankrolling the US-led coalition against Iraq in the
1991 Gulf war, and secondly with the collapse in oil prices over the last
decade.

Consequently, Saudi Arabia has a large number of
unemployed, university-educated young people but who are also schooled in
right-wing political Islam.

In the absence of any workers’ organisations or socialist
parties, this has made the country a fertile ground for reactionary Islamist
groups and their anti-Western propaganda. The aim of Saudi-born Osama bin
Laden is the removal of US troops and Westerners from the country and the
establishment of a Taliban-type regime.