"Why are Al Qaeda targeting westerners in Saudi Arabia, but aren't blowing up the oil lines?"
actually, from an npr report a few weeks ago: blowing up oil pipelines would be easy, since there are so many and they're mostly unprotected; but its rather ineffective, because they're also very easy to fix. i.e. except for the scare, its not gonna send prices soaring. the target they'd want is ... something along the lines of "pumping stations", i forget what they called them.
terrorizing americans is most likely a whole lot easier. you can do it at your leisure, in a time and place of your choosing; you need a minimal # of targets to get them all running; and you lose a good chunk of expertise all at once. it would be the better tactic to reduce productivity over the long term.
