The Rising Influence of Rising Affluence

[OakesCS]

zebra,

The Saudis would love to have more natural gas; unfortunately they insist on it coming from Saudi Arabia. Rather than being sensible and doing as you infer, the Saudis would rather burn crude oil for electrical power production. I've forgotten what the magnitude is but it's a disgusting amount of oil. Neighbors don't always get along so good and they'll literally go to ridiculous extremes to avoid giving the other guy money.

As for the 15% - that's not as bad as it gets. I've heard numbers up to about 30%.

Regarding skilled workers: unemployment among nationals in that part of the world is extremely high. It's not like there isn't work - it's just that many nationals will not do work that they consider to be beneath them. The exaggerated level of self-esteem, amongst other things, contributes to the competency problem referred to in the article.

There are some other stinky things underlying the article Dew posted but i can't talk about them (which are probably related to the 'free' aspect of the gas). I think Dew's skepticism is well-founded.
Charlie