Saudi Arabia's Aramco considering share sale | Hacker News Reader

Saudi Arabia's Aramco considering share sale

bbc.com

25 pointssnake11711 comments

This news is out of date, they don't plan to sell shares in the parent company; only shares in its downstream subsidiaries.

They clarified this a couple days after the submitted article was published. http://uk.reuters.com/article/uk-saudi-aramco-ipo-excusive-i...

So we can guess from this that they don't plan on public releasing an audit of their reserves. How we can allow a country like Saudi Arabia to be the swing producer without us having any idea of their reserves is insane - actually allowing them to destroy the frackers and other high cost producers for a couple of years of cheap oil is insane.

> actually allowing them to destroy the frackers and other high cost producers for a couple of years of cheap oil is insane.

As Americans, we're terribly shortsighted.

We provide agriculture subsidies, because food is a national security issue. But is not energy? OPEC held the US hostage 40 years ago, and we still haven't gotten our act together.

If we were smart (we're not), we would increase gas taxes to set a floor, and ratchet that floor up every 6 months. Those taxes would be diverted to electric vehicle incentives (currently, a $7500 tax credit; it should be a rebate taken off the price of vehicle at delivery).

Sadly, we're due to repeat our follies. People will buy gas guzzlers during this short reprieve, and then when the price skyrockets back up after expensive producers are pushed out of the market, everyone is going to whine, kick, and scream, "But but, it was so cheap!"

The House Of Saud doesn't care about climate change, they don't care about the global economy. All they care about is extracting as much per barrel as they can, for as long as they can (despite this temporary price cut to drive competitors out of business).

Sigh.

You have energy subsidies up wazoo.

From my memory banks, without doing any research I can think of three:

(1) The prohibition on exporting oil, just recently lifted

(2) Subsidies on corn for ethanol (a stupid thing to do)

(3) Lack of environmental controls on fracking. This is a negative subsidy, in that the absence of sensible policies is advantageous to a chosen industry

In the civilised world we think your agricultural subsidies (and the enormous amount of subsidies in all sorts of areas) are part of what makes the USA a rouge state.

sheesh

> In the civilised world we think your agricultural subsidies (and the enormous amount of subsidies in all sorts of areas) are part of what makes the USA a rouge state.

My ability to eat is more important than free trade.

I agree with your quibbles about corn ethanol and fracking environmental damage though. I'm hopeful that electric vehicles permanently damage corn ethanol subsidies. Biofuels for anything other than aviation are a joke.

I haven't heard much talk about this in the media, but has anyone noticed that Saudi's latest bout of hostilities towards Iran, active military role, and oil glut all began around the time King Abdullah died and this new fellow was crowned? At the time the media was universally saying that there would be no change in the status quo, but it seems to me that the status quo has very much changed.

You are not the only one to notice:

https://www.google.com/search?q=german+intelligence+BND+saud...

It's been awhile since I studied middle eastern politics but isn't the consensus still that once the KSA oil money runs out (which could be a long time if oil prices rebound), there is a good chance of violent revolution?

"Once the money runs out" anywhere, that tends to be the case.

http://uk.businessinsider.com/imf-regional-economic-outlook-...

What is more important is KSA where the house of Saud has bought the loyalties of its Populace with Welfare and subsidies is ending its Welfare binge and that is a problem for them.

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