Well, duh.
News just in: your health insurer doesn't really want to pay for your healthcare and lawyers are only in it for the money.
Sneering Imperialist
![[up]](https://static.tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pub/smiles/arrow_up.png "[up]"){kind=icon}
I know, but usually they aren't so blunt about it.
Now you know why the Patriot's Cabal is fostering this increase in oil prices. The conspiracy is looking out for us already!
Gristknife
Thank goodness for the Illuminanti!
Charlie Tunoku is a lover and a fighter.
Jamais vu
Well, at least he's honest.
UN JOUR JE SERAI DE RETOUR PRÈS DE TOI
Pretty flower
Is this where we declare the conspiracy nuts were in the right?
#IceBearForPresident
Gristknife
And he is displaying an elementry grasp of economics, not something common in that region.
Charlie Tunoku is a lover and a fighter.
ahhh yes, but when the oil runs out and we are looking for someone to blame who do you think that is going to fall on oh house of Saud?
Is that cake frosting?
I don't see the problem here. They are selling a product, and they know that their reserves are decreasing and that their clients are researching alternatives.
The fact that they want to keep the selling price within reasonable limits in order to give further incentives for the West to develop an alternative — as it will, eventually, and everyone knows that — is just basic economic common sense.
I am no fan of the government of Saudi Arabia; but in this case, I don't see what I would have done differently at his place.
edited 30th May '11 11:30:18 AM by Carciofus
But they seem to know where they are going, the ones who walk away from Omelas.
Its more the short sightedness to me. I mean whilst we MIGHT eventually develop alternative energy in large enough quantity to make it take over from oil this just seems to be saying that "we" need to stop "The west" doing so.
Is that cake frosting?
Well, they want to gain the most money possible before this happens, and hence they want to keep the prices relatively low in order not to offer too much incentive to that. I can see their reasons for this — it worries me from an ecological perspective, to be honest, but I understand where they are coming from.
Perhaps, if I were in their place, I would attempt to encourage research into other applications of hydrocarbons — after all, energy is only one of the things that you can get out of them — but I don't really know enough about the issue to judge.
Now what I obviously disagree with is the Saudi princes keeping most of the profits for themselves, but that's a different matter...
But they seem to know where they are going, the ones who walk away from Omelas.
NOT THE BEES
I understand that the Saudis realize their economy is basically propped up by one export and they don't want their main customers weaning themselves off it (really, their sentiment shouldn't be a shocker to anyone). But the point remains that they're also running out of said export, so the better long-term solution would be to find another niche — and fast.
edited 30th May '11 12:26:02 PM by Pykrete
See their investment in their "economic cities" which are basically places where they're trying to b uild new cities.
Gristknife
Saudi Arabia has actually socked away a significant amount of the money made off of oil in a Soverign Wealth Fund. When the oil runs out they'll have a very large cash reserve to rely on until their economy can restructure itself, not that the commoners will notice.
The people in Saudi Arabia worried about peak oil are those with twelve wives and forty kids.
Charlie Tunoku is a lover and a fighter.
I see the Awesomeness.
I'm tempted to say "no shit" but I don't want to sound too crass.
Fight smart, not fair.
Over 10,000 dead.:<
I like this. It makes alternative energy look less "dirty hippy" to raving buffoons in our country, and more patriotic.
Genkidama for Japan, even if you don't have money, you can help![1]
Least the Saudi prince is honest about it.
Honestly, this doesn't even strike me as jaded. More a "If we screw you over too much, you'll just find someone else" kind of thing. I don't think that it has anything to do with alternative sources of energy persay, so much as just alternative places of energy.
Gristknife
It was silly to say it in public though.
Charlie Tunoku is a lover and a fighter.
Pretty flower
This still displeases me since my inner cynic believes that even if America pays $80 a barrel instead of $100 like we do now, I'll still be paying $5 per gallon at the pump.
#IceBearForPresident
Oil is the lifeblood of the Saudi Kingdom. Without it, they are a country with nothing to offer the rest of the world economically.
I don't blame them, I'd feel the exact same way if I were them.
scratching at .8, just hopin'
h
Plastic is made from oil, so there will always be a demand for it.
The Shadows Devour You.
This brings to mind what the heck the Saudi people (not the government) are going to do when the oil goes down. They need to build up their secondary and tertiary industries, and they need to do it soon.
The term "Great Man" is disturbingly interchangeable with "mass murderer" in history books.
As found here.
In an interview broadcast Sunday on “CNN’s Fareed Zakaria GPS,” the grandson of the founding king of modern Saudi Arabia said the oil price should be somewhere between $70 and $80 a barrel, rather than the current level of over $100 a barrel.
“We don’t want the West to go and find alternatives, because, clearly, the higher the price of oil goes, the more they have incentives to go and find alternatives,” said Talal, who is listed by Forbes as the 26th richest man in the world.
As others have said, doesn’t that make you want to buy an electric car?
Share it so that people can get into this conversation, 'cause we're not the only ones who think like this.