Image: U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry, left, shakes hands with Saudi Arabia’s King Salman at the Royal Court, in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia, Thursday. (Andrew Harnik, AP)
RESCUED from December 2014
In the past, if there were the slightest of actions foreboding middle eastern unrest, oil prices would spike. However, even with ISIS wreaking violent havoc in Iraq and Syria….even with major middle eastern oil producers taking sides in what looks like a very tense and volatile situation in the Oil Basin….world oil prices have plummeted almost 50%.
The question is…why? This from the Guardian…..
John Kerry, the US secretary of state, allegedly struck a deal with King Abdullah in September under which the Saudis would sell crude at below the prevailing market price. That would help explain why the price has been falling at a time when, given the turmoil in Iraq and Syria caused by Islamic State, it would normally have been rising.
The details are emerging of a new secret and quite stupid Saudi-US deal on Syria and the so-called IS. It involves oil and gas control of the entire region and the weakening of Russia and Iran by Saudi Arabian flooding the world market with cheap oil. Details were concluded in the September meeting by US Secretary of State John Kerry and the Saudi King…
According to Rashid Abanmy, President of the Riyadh-based Saudi Arabia Oil Policies and Strategic Expectations Center, the dramatic price collapse is being deliberately caused by the Saudis, OPEC’s largest producer. The public reason claimed is to gain new markets in a global market of weakening oil demand. The real reason, according to Abanmy, is to put pressure on Iran on her nuclear program, and on Russia to end her support for Bashar al-Assad in Syria.
That’s, undoubtedly, the goal of Saudi Arabian leaders. Assad is hated by the Princes for sectarian and strategic reasons. But the goal of the U.S. in allegedly making such a deal with the Saudis…..is collapsing the Russian economy.
This is all part of the Oil Wars which will continue until every last drop of crude has been profitized….or nuclear winter kills us all….whichever comes first.
Don’t you find it a little bit strange that the U.S. corporate “news” business has had little-to-no interest in finding out why oil prices have plummeted 50% in such a short period of time? To me, that seems like a very important story that professional journalists would want to get to the bottom of. But apparently not.
Remember how everything was seemingly normal back in the early part of 2008? And then, all of a sudden…..Lehman went tits up, soon followed by the biggest bankster bailout….ever? Remember how it played out? Not much warning and then a quick $800 billion bailout to the culprits of the crime? Here’s Mike Whitney explaining how our secret “financial terrorism” deal with the Saudis may blowback on the U.S. economy in a similar manner…..
The Saudi-led insurgency has reversed the direction of the market, put global stocks into a nosedive and triggered a panic in the credit markets. And while the financial system edges closer to a full-blown crisis every day, policymakers in Washington have remained resolutely silent on the issue, never uttering as much as a peep of protest for a Saudi policy that can only be described as a deliberate act of financial terrorism.
Have you seen or heard anything from our Serious corporate “news” folks helping you to understand what’s at stake with this most-unusual crashing of world oil prices? Me, either. How can that be explained? You would think that oil prices crashing 50% in just a few months would stimulate the producers of “news” content to find the truth behind the headlines. But, sadly, no. Nothing to see here…..just move along.
If you want to find out more…..shut off the teevee, put down the newspaper, andstart with Whitney’s piece at Counterpunch….and then follow the links. There’s a lot Professional Journalists haven’t been telling us.
