Word: saudi
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...market. Although each day brings fresh accounts of breakdowns in the country's crude-oil machinery--fractured pipe-lines, controls damaged by looters, rusting equipment, 1970s technology in the 21st century--Iraq is the only country capable of flooding the world with cheap oil on the scale of Saudi Arabia. And that poses a major test for Washington...
...owners, the Iraqi people," the President said--the stakes go far beyond Iraq. The amount of oil that Iraq brings to market will not just determine the living standards of Iraqis but affect everything from the Russian economy to the price Americans pay for gasoline, from the stability of Saudi Arabia to Iran's future...
...cheaply. That's because, for geological reasons, Iraq boasts the world's most prolific wells. In 1979, the year before Iraq's oil fields were devastated by the first of three wars, its wells produced an average of 13,700 bbl. each per day. By contrast, each Saudi well averaged 10,200 bbl. U.S. wells, which are gradually drying up, averaged just 17 bbl. It would take more than 800 U.S. wells to pump as much oil as a typical Iraqi well. Consequently, production costs in Iraq are much lower. The average cost of bringing a barrel...
...sharpest reminder of the urgency of Bremer's mission came on Tuesday, not in Iraq itself, but in neighboring Saudi Arabia, where suspected al-Qaeda operatives staged a deadly multiple terror attack on Americans and other foreigners. Al Qaeda loves a vacuum - it's no coincidence that the network's headquarters have been in states such as Afghanistan and Sudan, rather than authoritarian autocracies such as Saddam's Iraq. But if the current turmoil in Iraq persists, it would certainly fit the textbook definition of an attractive setting for Bin Laden acolytes seeking new addresses...
...Saudi bombings are a reminder that al-Qaeda is very much alive after 18 months of the war on terror. But while an occasional attempt to mount a spectacular attack on the U.S. mainland remains a real danger, changed circumstances and opportunities may tempt the network to focus its efforts in the Arab territories whose "liberation" from U.S. influence remains one of the movement's founding objectives...