I don’t know of any country that has greater potential for growth than the Arab oil-producing states. Leading these is Saudi Arabia whose oil wells pump as much as nine million barrels a day without this resulting in pushing prices below $30 a barrel. It is a situation that throws into confusion all the projections and expectations made by market analysts.
We have gone through such a hard time that almost drove us to despair. It was when production fell below four million bpd and prices plummeted to half of today’s prices. It was also the period when mothers gave birth to more children triggering a population boom and consumer demands went up sharply.
Things have since improved. Not only that, there is now more reason to be optimistic with natural gas becoming the second major supplier of market energy demands. This is especially the case now that two giant projects considered as landmarks in the Kingdom’s history have been commissioned.
Such huge wealth remains the dream of people all over the world who wish to see the day when they wake up one morning finding oil and natural gas gushing out in their country. Oil is seen as the magic solution that, with little effort, can transform the land and forever change the life of nations. However, it is not enough just to strike the ground to start the oil flowing. It needs policies to transform it into jobs, roads, airports, schools and hospitals and also for these in turn to become part of a society that benefits from what is at its disposal and become independent. A society can only be independent when it has enough doctors, engineers, teachers, workers and projects capable of standing on their own feet without the need for petrodollars to sustain them. Arab countries can thus be considered to be lucky with oil and gas funding their first steps toward development but they would not be so lucky if they failed to cross the transitional period into true economic independence.
I can’t complain if the people who built the huge gas projects in Saudi Arabia who number more than 11,000 have come from more than 30 countries. Likewise, I do not blame Saudis if they believe that after 70 years of working with oil they feel fully qualified in the business. Maybe Aramco, the oil company, cannot afford to spend its money training Saudis. Maybe they fell that what is more important is building a solid gas base.
Such huge wealth has provided the entire region and not just the oil companies with massive incomes through direct and indirect spending. You could smell oil even in Beirut, capital of Lebanon, which lies far away from the Saffaniya oil field.
The truth is that oil has never received the reward it deserves. I don’t mean we should go to the oil fields, kiss them and present the chairman of Aramco with letters of thanks for every barrel they produce. What we should do is recognize the importance of this vital sector and its influence on our lives. Yet the new Arab poets have penned more lines of disparagement and criticism of it than they have written about wine. Arab intellectuals have unjustly blamed oil for all the misfortunes and calamities that have befallen the region since the sailing of the first tanker carrying the first shipment of oil from Arabian Gulf waters seven decades ago.
The truth is that without oil the Arabs would not amount to much, nor would Arab states.
