Word: aramco
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Dates: during 1990-1999
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...aftershocks from the Jubail blast and firestorm are still being felt. Fearful of sabotage, Saudi Aramco, the country's national oil company, has since refused to hire any new Shi'ite workers, who until recently made up 40% of its work force. The company has traditionally been the only major employer in the Eastern province willing to employ Shi'ites and thus has served as an important path of upward mobility. "Shi'ite leaders are trying to convince the powers that be that ((Jubail)) was the act of a few individuals," says a U.S. official. "Unfortunately, the whole community...
...ites of Arabia's east coast have for decades met with cultural and religious intolerance from the dominant Wahhabi (Sunni fundamentalist) authorities. Among young Shi'ite men, the unemployment rate is 30%, and would be far higher but for Aramco...
Clandestine Iraqi radio broadcasts have recently begun calling on the Shi'ites to rise up -- so far, to no avail. "The Iraqis have very good intelligence," says one U.S. official. "They've already focused on the discrimination at Saudi Aramco." Says another official: "The Shi'a have a grievance, and if they are ignored, it will probably grow...
This time, however, the real clout rests with the oil-rich countries. Cut off from its former sources of supply and struggling from a failed bid to buy Getty Oil, Texaco turned to its former junior partner, Aramco, for help in 1988. The result was Star Enterprise, a fifty-fifty joint venture between Texaco and Aramco, for which the Saudis paid $1.8 billion. The venture operates three U.S. refineries and markets fuel at 11,450 filling stations...
Kuwait Petroleum has moved even more aggressively than Aramco into refining and marketing. Kuwait bought Gulf's refining and marketing operations in Europe in 1983, and recently launched an exploration and marketing campaign in the Far East, beginning with Thailand. Brags Kuwait's Sheik Ali Khalifa Al- Sabah, who recently switched posts from Oil Minister to Finance Minister: "We will be flying our colors in other countries soon. We expect to find many new opportunities in Eastern Europe, and if an opportunity arises in the U.S., we will look seriously at that...