So...
Shocked and Amazed Americans across most of the country have been encountering signs like these recently:
And while many large media outlets drone on continuously about this being a very bad thing, average Americans hear very little of the mainstream media these days. Those that do mostly shrug and hand over the twenty bucks it took to fill up and gleefully get the hell outta the parking lot before someone changes their mind.
The few that do pay attention are told that we can blame/thank the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia for our new found fortune. They explain further that this an attempt by the Saudi's to rid the United States of its new-found oil riches by making Fracking (drilling) unaffordable. The theory goes that after an extended period of low prices, further drilling in the the Bakken Shale(North Dakota) and Eagle Ford(Texas) will come to a dead stop
But how true is any of this? And if it is, why would a country with such deep ties to the United States essentially declare economic war?
The Kingdom, after all, got its start in the oil business when U.S. companies began drilling there in the 1930's. Saudi Aramco, the national oil company of Saudi Arabia, (Saudi Arabian-American Oil Company), is even named after the U.S.
In the 1990s the U.S. spent billions in defense of the Kingdom. Operation Desert Shield/Storm as they were called, were a last ditch effort to prevent Hussein from simply taking the country.
During the post 9/11 chaos, great effort was taken to make sure that our ally wasn't blamed for the attacks, even though, according to the official narrative, most of the hijackers leaving Boston's Logan Airport that morning had entered the country on Saudi passports.
And despite this Saudi Arabia has chosen this moment to close the door on years of co-operation. A predominately Sunni Muslim country that has made peace both with Israel and with the West has decided the status quo no longer holds.
So who is making this decision, and why?
Saudi Arabia is not a country in the way we think of in the West. It is a Kingdom. It is the part of the Arabian peninsula under control of the "House of Saud" And its current king is Abdullah ibn Abdilazīz.
This isn't some fairy-tale wedding, inbred, huge nose, balding, lots of castles, carriages, cricket, and guards with funny uniforms kind of Royalty. See unlike the leftovers of European Monarchy, which are actually all some form of democratic socialist republics, in this Kingdom the King is actually in charge.
Sort of...
You see the King Abdullah is the son of the founder of Saudi Arabia, and he's 91 years old. And depending on who you would like to believe some time early in 2014 it was discovered he has cancer. Lung cancer. Now for moment lets leave the prognosis of a 91 year old with lung cancer aside. Let us instead talk about John Fitzgerald Kennedy.
Depending on your age the name stirs different feelings. For someone alive and older that five years old in 1963 you might have some deep feelings about November 22nd.
You might think about Camelot, or lone a gunman, or a conspiracy. Perhaps other names pop up, like Zapruder, Walter Cronkite, or Jack Ruby, maybe Chief Justice Warren.
But I know what no one, alive then, or alive now remembers. No one remembers a Crisis of Power. No one recalls wondering who the next president would be, or how it would be decided. There was a plan. Everyone got back on the plane, LBJ took the oath of office, and the United States of America kept on.
But the Kingdom has no such plan.
One of the problems of mixing Monarchy and Polygamy and Divorce is that things get confusing very quick. In addition to awkward dinners parties where you accidentally discover your new 17th wife is your crazy uncle Bandar's ex-3rd wife, it can also lead to a Crisis of Power.
King Abdullah's Father had 22 wives and 45 sons. They didn't bother to count the daughters.
Multiply the clusterfuck down 4 generations and the count of the possible number of heirs rises quickly. So far this hasn't been a problem, because the current king gets to name his successor. Abdullah has named three so far. Two of them died from old age while waiting. In 2012 the then 88 year old King chose Salman bin Abdulaziz to become the crown prince. Problems are as follows:
- According to multiple people who know more than me Salman appears to have Dementia, Alzheimers, and according to some sources be generally batshit crazy and unsuitable as an heir.
- The younger generations are getting antsy.
None of this is a well kept secret.
It became quite clear in May 2014 that Abdullah's days were numbered. At the same time everyone in the Kingdom knew a power struggle was ahead. And everyone in a position of power at Saudi Aramco know the fragility of the economy of the Kingdom's protector, the United States. A protracted Crisis of Power would add extreme volatility to oil markets and kill whatever is left of the economic recovery in the United States
Now it's coincidence time...
The chart above (from this Weeks TWIP) shows the price of the front month contract for a barrel of oil. The blue line shows from February of last year till now.
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