Word: saudi
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...companies' pleas were largely ignored at the summit. As if to underscore Big Oil's shrinking clout in the oil world, the summit's most powerful delegate - Saudi oil minister Ali Al-Naimi - arrived after the big guns from the oil companies had left, and was mobbed by photographers and television reporters who waited for hours to catch him on camera. With Saudi Arabia sitting atop the world's biggest known energy reserves - 264 billion barrels of oil and nearly 258 trillion cubic feet of gas - Naimi is OPEC's leading figure, who can slash or boost world oil prices...
...pushed biofuels as the major energy alternative, which has ravaged forests and agricultural land. Biofuels, he said, "will produce just 6% of energy consumption by 2010, and has not even reduced greenhouse gases." Instead, the world's most powerful oilman advocated "truly renewable sources of energy, like solar power." Saudi Arabia this year committed $300 million to researching alternative energies, even though they plan within the next year to boost their oil output from 11 million barrels a day to 12.5 million barrels...
...Court in London, in a damning rebuke of ex-Prime Minister Tony Blair's administration, ruled Thursday that the government's own Serious Fraud Office (SFO) broke the law in 2006 when it scrapped a corruption probe into arms deals between BAE Systems, Britain's biggest defense firm, and Saudi Arabia...
...judgment, handed down by Lord Justice Moses and Justice Sullivan, censured Robert Wardle, director of the SFO, for allowing threats made by Saudi officials to scupper the probe into allegations of bribery. The Blair government called a halt to that investigation in December 2006, a decision it insisted was made purely in the interest of national security. The court was scathingly unconvinced. "No one, whether within this country or outside, is entitled to interfere with the course of our justice," the judges ruled. "It is the failure of Government and [Wardle] to bear that essential principle in mind that justifies...
...probe, begun in July 2004, focused on the alleged payment of bribes by BAE in connection with its $60 billion "Al-Yamamah" arms deal agreed with Saudi Arabia in the mid-'80s. According to the High Court judgment, BAE sought in late 2005 to persuade Lord Goldsmith, then Britain's Attorney General, to call a halt to the inquiry, claiming it would sour relations between the U.K. and Saudi Arabia, and endanger future lucrative arms deals...