{"id":3505,"date":"2014-12-24T13:23:44","date_gmt":"2014-12-24T18:23:44","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/olduvai.ca\/?p=3505"},"modified":"2014-12-24T13:23:44","modified_gmt":"2014-12-24T18:23:44","slug":"did-the-saudis-and-the-us-collude-in-dropping-oil-prices","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/?p=3505","title":{"rendered":"Did The Saudis And The US Collude In Dropping Oil Prices?"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><a href=\"http:\/\/oilprice.com\/Energy\/Oil-Prices\/Did-The-Saudis-And-The-US-Collude-In-Dropping-Oil-Prices.html\">Did The Saudis And The US Collude In Dropping Oil Prices?<\/a>.<\/p>\n<p style=\"font-weight: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-size: 1em; font-family: inherit; vertical-align: baseline; padding: 0px; margin: 0px 0px 1em 0px; border: 0px initial initial;\">The oil price drop that has dominated the headlines in recent weeks has been framed almost exclusively in terms of oil market economics, with most media outlets blaming Saudi Arabia, through its OPEC Trojan horse, for driving down the price, thus causing serious damage to the world&#8217;s major oil exporters \u2013 most notably Russia.<\/p>\n<p style=\"font-weight: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-size: 1em; font-family: inherit; vertical-align: baseline; padding: 0px; margin: 0px 0px 1em 0px; border: 0px initial initial;\">While the market explanation is partially true, it is simplistic, and fails to address key geopolitical pressure points in the Middle East.<\/p>\n<p style=\"font-weight: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-size: 1em; font-family: inherit; vertical-align: baseline; padding: 0px; margin: 0px 0px 1em 0px; border: 0px initial initial;\"><a style=\"font-weight: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-size: 14px; font-family: inherit; vertical-align: baseline; color: #24606c; text-decoration: underline; outline-style: none; outline-width: initial; outline-color: initial; padding: 0px; margin: 0px; border: 0px initial initial;\" href=\"http:\/\/oilprice.com\/\">Oilprice.com<\/a>\u00a0looked beyond the headlines for the reason behind the oil price drop, and found that the explanation, while difficult to prove, may revolve around control of oil and gas in the Middle East and the weakening of Russia, Iran and Syria by flooding the market with cheap oil.<\/p>\n<p style=\"font-weight: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-size: 1em; font-family: inherit; vertical-align: baseline; padding: 0px; margin: 0px 0px 1em 0px; border: 0px initial initial;\"><strong style=\"font-weight: bold;\">The oil weapon<\/strong><\/p>\n<p style=\"font-weight: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-size: 1em; font-family: inherit; vertical-align: baseline; padding: 0px; margin: 0px 0px 1em 0px; border: 0px initial initial;\">We don&#8217;t have to look too far back in history to see Saudi Arabia, the world&#8217;s largest oil exporter and producer, using the oil price to achieve its foreign policy objectives. In 1973, Egyptian President Anwar Sadat convinced Saudi King Faisal to cut production and raise prices, then to go as far as embargoing oil exports, all with the goal of punishing the United States for supporting Israel against the Arab states. It worked. 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The oil price drop that has dominated the headlines in recent weeks has been framed almost exclusively in terms of oil market economics, with most media outlets blaming Saudi Arabia, through its OPEC Trojan horse, for driving down the price, thus causing serious damage [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[3,5],"tags":[1775,600,701,827],"class_list":["post-3505","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-energy-2","category-geopolitics","tag-oil-price-collapse","tag-opec","tag-saudi-arabia","tag-united-states"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3505","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=3505"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3505\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":3506,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3505\/revisions\/3506"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=3505"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=3505"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=3505"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}