Readers of The American Thinker are aware that oil prices and Saudi Arabia are closely related phenomena, because of the Saudis' role as 'swing producer' within OPEC — the producer able to quickly increase or decrease production so as to put upward or downward pressure on world prices. Saudi Arabia has spent billions of dollars on excess capacity, so as to be able to wield this club.

Our Ed Lasky reported here eleven days ago that there is ample reason to believe that the Saudis are self—consciously pushing prices up by restraining OPEC production, in order to throttle US economic growth, and make George W. Bush into a one—term President. The article occasioned many links on the web, some talk radio chatter, and a deluge of hits to our site. Nobody in the 'mainstream' media picked it up. After all, it was speculative.

Reuters today reports that the Saudis are 'worried' about the high level of world oil prices, though there is no move yet to do anything about it.

Saudi Oil Minister Ali al—Naimi said in an interview he did not yet know whether strong oil prices would lead the Organization of the Petroleum Exporting Countries to delay its pact to cut supplies by one million barrels per day from April.

"We too are worried about prices but we also look at fundamentals of demand," Naimi told Il Sole 24 Ore.

"I am convinced there are two reasons for such a high price —— the reduced quantity of petrol in America and speculators who are convinced there is going to be a lack of crude."

Naimi, oil minister of the world's largest crude exporter, would not predict the outcome of the cartel's meeting on March 31 in Vienna.

Hmmm. The Saudis posturing themselves to be on the side of 'concern,' but not willing to actually do anything to bring prices down. All very unfortunate you see, but not their fault at all.

We noticed that right after Ed's article appeared, our site received 114 hits originating in Saudi Arabia, a country where our readership has never been exactly robust. Interestingly enough, hits from Saudi Arabia took another jump over the last few days....

Nahh, couldn't be. Megalomaniacal delusions. Right?

We would be delighted to be proven irrelevant by Saudi Arabia actually doing something about world oil prices roughly fifty percent above its own stated price band midpoint.

Posted by Thomas  03 21 04