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> What they actually need is population contraction, desperately.

They also need to stop treating women like being worst than cattle, that way maybe industries other than the ones heavily involved in the industrial-military complex would come and invest in SA (the "women are seen as worst than cattle"-analogy has been told to me by a friend who used to work in SA as part of a defense company).

Also, they need to "secularize" their education pretty rapidly. The same friend, an engineer, told me how one of his Saudi colleagues was telling him and his other colleagues about how they used to teach the Quran in SA's engineering schools. Also, said SA engineer confided in his Western colleagues by telling them that he was a closet Atheist, and if word got out about his non-believe status he would risk the death penalty. You cannot build a modern, wealthy society when you're still threatening your people with the death penalty for not believing in a particular god or religion.

   oil economy is now trapped in hell

And it gets worse because all industrialised countries are trying to move away from hydorcarbon fuels, not without success.

   it'll rip the kingdom apart.

And many middle eastern countries would be delighted, and will covertly aid this process.

>>And many middle eastern countries would be delighted, and will covertly aid this process.

They might be in the middle of the same thing for themselves. Virtually all depend on oil, smaller but richer ones like Qatar, Dubai etc might get invaded, ala Kuwait

The moves away from nuclear and coal are stronger. Consumption of oil & gas is still on the rise globally.

That is true. Your comment motivated me to go dig a bit deeper on the statistics. The EIA data browser is a great tool for that:

https://www.eia.gov/beta/international/data/browser/

Oil consumption is dropping in Europe, stable in the US and rising fast in Asia and Middle East (also in Africa, but it is on absolute terms not very relevant).

It seems more technologically advanced countries are seeing an uptake in new energy sources. If this theory is correct, it is expected that tech will percolate to the rest of the world, and a drop in oil consumption is indeed on the medium-term horizon.

China's push towards electric transportation is consistent with this theory.

Saudi Arabia has always had a history of sectarianism and uprisings like the 1970 Qatif Uprising[1]. While they can deal with their internal problems, I am hoping that without oil funding, Wahhabism will calm down elsewhere.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1979_Qatif_Uprising

With all of the region in chaos (to which KSA is contributing) the chances of uprising turning into long civil war are not negligible.

You are right in that the article doesn't discuss what is going on with not just U.S. shale oil but also how U.S. oil can be sold on the global market rather than be exclusively for the domestic market as used to be the case.

For Saudi Arabia the deal with America is that the House of Saud get to stay in power in exchange for the oil, it is that simple. If there is this 'uprising' that you speak of then it will be Uncle Sam's job to put it down.

The original deal goes back to the time when Britain was supposed to have Iran and the U.S was supposed to have Saudi Arabia. On the back of this deal the Saudi 'Royal Family' have built some myth of entitlement to the throne and being a proper 'royal family'. It is an illusion, there is no legitimacy there. So long as they wear the 'traditional' outfits and keep the 'traditional' laws nobody is going to see that the emperor has no clothes.

I don't get the impression that there is any type of organisation against this so-called 'royal family' with a class of people clued up as to how to live in a non-feudal society. They are far from socialist, mere serfs in an offshoot of empire, relatively rich because that is where the oil comes from. They never had industrial capitalism, they went straight from sand and a bit of tourism revenue to the monster of finance capitalism, trickledown economics and everything that the IMF demands. Because of the oil they do get a few empty gifts from the system such as cheap petrol.

For decades those dollars have flowed back to the West in arms sales. To an extent this clawing back of the money has also happened with luxury goods too. So the serf-grade workers of Saudi Arabia are doubly screwed, when this imaginary 'uprising' happens and they impose a government that 'shares the wealth' they will find it has all been spent on underground aircraft hangars and bits of paper that are allegedly investments in the Western stock market.

My favourite fact regarding oil is how it all went wrong in the 1970's with the oil crisis. What only a careful reading of the Wikipedia article tells you is that the US increased grain prices 300% to pay for Vietnam. This was bad news for the OPEC countries, places like Iran had kind of got used to affordable wheat. This wheat had kind of covered the U.S. balance of payments for oil imports before Vietnam, so it had been a happy arrangement. Our history tells the 1970's oil crisis very differently, forgetting the wheat price hikes.

As the article states the government can make quite a few concessions, e.g. women driving, allowing people to go to the theatre, that sort of thing. They can buy off those that might resent how things are going by these concessions yet still keep a tight grip on the deal which is essentially oil for arms and food.

I don't think the recent liberalisation is about buying people off. I think it's a recognition that if they're going to establish anything like a real economy, women are going to play a huge part in that because so much of their human capital is locked away in the female population. They’re dramatically more entrepreneurial and better educated than Saudi men.

> they’re dramatically more entrepreneurial and better educated than Saudi men.

How can that be if they've been locked up into their homes until recently? (To my limited understanding of KSA)

A bit over half of University graduate students within KSA are women and they generally achieve higher grades than male students. There are also tens of thousands of female students studying abroad. Their education is largely segregated within the kingdom, but they also have at least one all-female university. However less than 10% of the work force is female, so there's a huge reserve of expensively trained unused female talent.

> generally achieve higher grades than male students

Because they follow rules obediently. That same tendency nets them lower salaries, with a conciliatory style during negotiations.

Benefits the economy even more.

> For Saudi Arabia the deal with America is that the House of Saud get to stay in power in exchange for the oil, it is that simple. If there is this 'uprising' that you speak of then it will be Uncle Sam's job to put it down.

That certainly used to be the deal. The US no longer has any need of OPEC oil. The US got 3.3 million barrels per day from OPEC in 2017, down from 4.2m in 2012. I haven't seen the last two months of data for 2018, but I believe that fell below 3m per day for 2018. That will drop by another million barrels per day over the next few years.

US oil production is estimated to climb to 16-18 million barrels per day over the next eight to ten years give or take. OPEC now stands in the way of the US maximizing its oil position and the value of its enormous production.

The US will benefit from destroying Saudi Arabia at some point. US global hegemony (courtesy of energy production) is increased if you permanently decimate Saudi Arabian oil production. All the countries that need Saudi Arabia's oil, including China, will find themselves into an economically compromised position and require US oil to fill the demand.

Between now and the switch to all-electric vehicles globally (20-30 years), the US is economically best served to deplete as much of its oil as possible.

If you're a nefarious US looking to increase your power, the only question would be the ideal time to pull the trigger and collapse them. You boost US production from 12m barrels per day, to 18m, and slash Saudi down by six plus million by turning their country into a war zone.

18m barrels per day times $85 oil = $1.53 trillion

Versus today's 12m barrels per day at $50 oil = $600 billion

Over ten years, that value gap is reasonably $8 to $10 trillion. How much are Exxon and Chevron (2 of the 3 largest holders of acreage in the Permian) worth under that 18m * $85 scenario?

Or push it a notch further: 2029, 20m barrels per day at $100 oil (equivalent to maybe ~$60 in 2004, a tolerable inflation adjusted level). $2 trillion per year, the size of Italy's whole economy. It would pour a bonanza of epic proportions into the domestic US economy. I don't believe either 18m or 20m barrels per day of US production can co-exist in the next eight to ten years with Saudi Arabia's ~10-11m production (much less their desire/fantasy for more production at a higher price to keep up with their budget).

Simple question: what will the US do to realize that value potential? It'll certainly not be concerned about the collapse of Saudi Arabia, putting it mildly. Cynically or not, there's a popular opinion about what the US is willing to do as it pertains to oil; what then will it do for its own, massive, direct benefit re oil? That benefit scenario is several fold better than just ensuring oil supply from overseas as in the past. The days of (non-Canadian) foreign oil being a strategic critical are nearly over, which means the US allegiance to the Saudi deal is running out. Everyone knows how willing the US is to flip such an allegiance when it's convenient, there's no scenario where the US will feel bound to continue with that after it no longer serves the US interests.

That doesn't really make much sense. As the biggest global consumers of oil, US businesses and the economy in general benefit more from cheap oil than from expensive oil. Furthermore a Saudi in chaos can't act as a regional counter to Iran and pro-Iranian forces in Syria, Iraq and Yemen. A civil war in the kingdom would undo decades of American power broking and defense alliance building in the region and leave it wide open to exploitation by America's rivals. Bear in mind SA and the gulf states have huge Shia populations.

Does anybody here think the US doesn't operate by special interest lobbying?

At 16m-20m barrels per day, the interests served by that much oil production at $85-$100 prices, is pretty clear.

The US economy can easily tolerate $85-$100 oil circa 2029. Inflation adjust that back 25 years to 2004, you get maybe in the realm of $50-$60 oil. The US will be less oil dependent in 2029 than it is today or in 2004, continuing its existing trend line of a lot more economic output without a corresponding increase in oil consumption.

$10-$15 billion in annual arms purchases from Saudi Arabia is meaningless against $1.5-$2 trillion in annual domestic oil production in my scenario. They'll just bump the US military budget to offset the difference.

Your last section, describing how the US needs Saudi as a regional counter and stabilizing agent, assumes the US acts with particular long-term rational behavior in its pursuits. When have you ever seen that be the case in the post WW2 era? It's rare. We wouldn't be in the situation we are now with Iraq, Syria, Iran, et al. if the US behaved the way your theory proposes. The scenario one would expect based on the last 70 years of US behavior, is instigated chaos (whether originally intentional or not).

Exxon and Chevron (not to mention a dozen other relevant oil companies) are far richer and more politically powerful than Lockheed Martin.

So when it suits your pre-conceived ideas the US acts predictably in support of establishment interests, but when it doesn't the US acts irrationally against it's own interests. If it's irrational, how can you predict anything about it's behaviour?

I think the central issue is that the US is highly susceptible to special interest lobbying. Yes, I believe you can take that bet to the bank. We see it every day in Washington and across most segments of the system (from security to various industries to domestic and foreign policy).

There's no conflict between that and the routinely chaotic and irrational foreign policy of the US. They can both exist side by side. Some of the foreign policy irrationality is in fact caused by domestic lobbying, we've seen that throughout post-agrarian US history where the US Government intervenes in foreign affairs on behalf of powerful domestic commercial interests. A further cause of that foreign policy irrationality is at least in part due to administration changes over time, with which agendas change. Adminstrations change, domestic lobbying continues. If you need to think long-term, and you change plans every four to eight years or similar, you're inevitably going to get chaos and wild unintended outcomes. Consider all the plan changes from Bush to Obama to Trump in Afghanistan. I'm not arguing that their goal is necessarily chaos, rather, it's the inevitable product of the approach.

I'm not arguing that acting on behalf of domestic oil interests that might want to see Saudi's output hampered, is rational. Indeed, that might very well be another ideal example of irrational, dangerous behavior that could cause more instability. When trillions of dollars are at stake, one thing you can assume is lobbying toward the dollars will be involved.

I don't believe there's any meaningful US Government loyalty to Saudi Arabia beyond a matter of oil convenience. Trillions of dollars at stake over time as it pertains to domestic oil production, is worth a lot more than the arms purchases from Saudi Arabia. As the US oil production figures continue to rise year after year, the powerful interests represented in that will want higher prices. Their influence increases as the production does (and Saudi's influence declines).

Saudi is set to become primarily a competitor of one of the largest, most important industries in the US. Rather than a relationship of shared security (they get system security, we get oil security), it'll become a relationship of growing animosity / tension, which we're already seeing the early beginnings of (Congress being willing to invoke its war powers to try to force an end to the US support of Saudi re Yemen; and their increasing willingness to criticize Saudi generally).

When it comes to the rest, why should the US care about Syria strategically? The US should have never been over there in the first place. The only people that want us there are the war hawks.

The next administration after Trump will yield more new chaos, as plans and agendas change. It's the inevitable consequence to being perpetually in a position of war and meddling in foreign nations. You're always there as a nation and the people controlling the meddling come and go, with each change lighting new unintended fires. I'd argue that any involvement choices made in the Middle East other than to entirely pull out of the region, are by default irrational. There's no winning or rational direction if you're doing what we're doing, only fires to constantly be put out while you're in the muck of it.

> Between now and the switch to all-electric vehicles globally (20-30 years)

I haven't seen anyone seriously predicting sea and air transport fully going electric in that timescale - current tech would require massive amounts of rare earths and isn't really viable as regards air yet I don't think. There will likely still be reasonable demand for kerosene and hopefully LPG if we can get sea transport off bunker fuel.

> grain prices 300% to pay for Vietnam

Nice historic trivia here, a genuinely thank you for the info, I for one wasn't aware of that connection. Wasn't the same hike in the price of US wheat partially to blame for the wheat shortages experienced by the USSR in the second half of the '70s?

I don't see how that follows - Lysenkoism and general taking of labor for granted. The USSR had a heavy practically mercantalist economy. Either they produced too little or exported too much.

> Either they produced too little

I think they produced too little and at some point the US wheat market became off-limits for them. There's this Wikipedia article [1] stating how because of a failed crop the URSS basically bought everything they could get their hand on from the Chicago Mercantile Exchange (this was happening in 1972), and I also found this 1982 Foreign Affairs article [2] that detailed the reasons why URSS had become a net grain importer by that time. Also, apparently Russian PM and economist Yegor Gaidar said that the fall of the URSS was partially caused by the "wheat situation", combined with a decrease in the price of oil in the 1980s [3]

> But there was a more immediate explanation for the collapse of the Soviet Union provided by Yegor Gaidar, who had been acting prime minister of Russia from June of 1992 to December of 1992 and a key figure in the transformation of the Russian economy. In his last work, Collapse of an Empire: Lessons for Modern Russia, published in 2007 Gaidar provides a powerful explanation for the collapse of the Soviet Union. Soviet agriculture had stagnated in the 1980's but the demand for grain in the cities was increasing. It was necessary to buy grain in the international market. While the price of petroleum was high it was feasible to finance the purchase of grain from internal sources. When the price of petroleum fell in the late 1980's the Soviet Union needed to borrow the funds from Western banks to purchase the needed grain. This severely restricted the international activities of the Soviet Union. It could not send in Soviet troops to put down the rebellions against communism in Eastern Europe because such an action would have resulted in a refusal of Western sources to lend the money needed. Likewise the attempted coup d'état was doomed to failure because the coup leaders would not have been able to borrow the funds needed to stave off starvation in the major cities.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Great_grain_robbery

[2] https://www.foreignaffairs.com/articles/russia-fsu/1982-03-0...

[3] http://www.sjsu.edu/faculty/watkins/sovietcollapse.htm

Random factoid: IIRC, part of the backstory of the 80s movie Red Dawn was a failure of Soviet agriculture, which then motivated the invasion of the US.