Jubail
These industrial complexes, built at
Jubail on the Arabian Gulf and Yanbu on the Red Sea by the Royal Commission for Jubail and Yanbu, are
the key to the Kingdom's national industrialization plans. These two industrial
cities provide the basis for the Kingdom's program to develop hydrocarbon-based
and energy intensive industries. The massive investment in these industrial
cities has as its major objective a reduction in the Kingdom's dependence on oil
revenues by gaining access to the world's petrochemical markets. This route to
industrialization exploits the Kingdom's natural advantages, in terms of cheap
energy and cheap raw materials for petrochemical
manufacture.
Q-8
Apparently a relatively new oil company
based out of Kuwait, hence the name
The Q8
Special Products portfolio consists of base oils, process oils, L.P.G. and
bitumen. All of these products derive from Kuwait Export Crude refined at our
facility in Rotterdam.
Because of this we are the only oil company in the world who can guarantee the
consistency of our product quality.
Finished
product is stored in Rotterdam and the
UK
International
Energy Agency
The International Energy Agency, based in
Paris, is an autonomous agency
linked with the Organisation for Economic
Co-operation and Development (OECD).
The IEA is the energy forum for 26 Member countries. IEA Member
governments are committed to taking joint measures to meet oil supply emergencies. They have
also agreed to share energy information, to co-ordinate their energy policies
and to co-operate in the development of rational energy programmes.
To maintain and improve systems for
coping with oil supply disruptions;
To promote rational energy policies in a global context
through co-operative relations with non-Member countries, industry and
international organisations;
To operate a permanent information system on the
international oil market;
To improve the world's energy supply and demand
structure by developing alternative energy sources and increasing the efficiency
of energy use;
To assist in the integration of
environmental and energy policies.
Sabah family
The Sabah family has traditionally assigned
most of the key Cabinet positions — the Foreign, Defense, Interior, and
Finance ministries almost always, and often (as now) Oil and Information as well
— to members of the extended family. This has led to a fairly consistent pattern
of conflict with Parliament, especially when a critical parliament wants to
exercise its right to question Cabinet ministers who, it just happens, are also
members of the ruling family. That was almost certainly what brought the last
Parliament down (See The Estimate, May 7, 1999).
Haidar Aliev
Hi, for those of you who do not know me I am Heydar Aliyev. I am
the
President of Azerbaijan which was once a part of the former
Soviet
Union. I have been described as a pragmatic
leader and I was been in
office since 1993. I have promised the people of
Azerbaijan
many
democratic reforms along with an institution of free markets. One of
the
markets that
Azerbaijan
excels in is the oil industry. For the past 70
years
Azerbaijan had
been a part of the Soviet Union and all the oil
went
to Moscow now the oil
belongs to
Azerbaijan and
now the country can
prosper. Since the beginning of the 20th century
Azerbaijan has
been
among the world
Oscar Wyatt
founder and chairman of Coastal Oil & Gas Corporation of
Houston,
Texas
(Mack). Coastal has international
investments in Libya, Iraq, Peru,
Bermuda, Germany, India, Pakistan, Estonia,
Canada, China, Central
America, the Caribbean, Indonesia, and Venezuela, and
offices in London
and SingaporeI was instrumental in the Coastal-Libya
contract arrangement during the
economic sanctions against Libya in 1987 in
response to that countries
involvement in international terrorism. I was able
to sleaze my way
into that one by working through a foreign subsidiary and a
refinery
in
Germany
not bound by
U.S.
sanctions.
Abdul Aziz Ibn
Saud
King Abdul Aziz bin Abdul Rahman Al Saud
(known as Ibn Saud) was a tall, imposing figure, a natural leader of men. He
knew instinctively how to judge men and, as his rule progressed, how best to
exploit the natural
resources of his country for the benefit of his people. His
achievement, the unification of many warring tribes all proud of their own
lineage and traditions, laid the foundations for the modern state of
Saudi
Arabia.
President
Nazerbayev
In June 1989, Kolbin
was replaced by Nazarbayev, a politician trained as a metallurgist and engineer.
Nazarbayev had become involved in party work in 1979, when he became a protégé
of reform members of the CPSU. Having taken a major role in the attacks on
Kunayev, Nazarbayev may have expected to replace him in 1986. When he was passed
over, Nazarbayev submitted to Kolbin's authority and used his party position to
support Gorbachev's new line, attributing economic stagnation in the Soviet
republics to past subordination of local interests to the mandates of
Moscow.
Soon proving himself
a skilled negotiator, Nazarbayev bridged the gap between the republic's Kazaks
and Russians at a time of increasing nationalism while also managing to remain
personally loyal to the Gorbachev reform program. Nazarbayev's firm support of
the major Gorbachev positions in turn helped him gain national and, after 1990,
even international visibility. Many reports indicate that Gorbachev was planning
to name Nazarbayev as his deputy in the new union planned to succeed the
Soviet
Union
Rentier
State
i.e. a state that depends on
external aid (or oil revenues) rather than on the production of goods and
services by its citizens.
Shatt al
Arab
tidal river,
120 mi (193 km) long, formed by the confluence of the Tigris and Euphrates rivers, flowing SE to the
Persian Gulf, forming part of the Iraq-Iran border; the Karun is its chief tributary. The
Shatt al Arab flowed through a broad, swampy delta, but
the marshland in
Iraq was drained
in the early 1990s in order to increase government control over the Arab Shiites
who lived there. The river supplies fresh water to S Iraq
and Kuwait and
is navigable for oceangoing vessels as far as Basra,
Iraq's chief port.
Iraq and Iran
have disputed navigation rights on the Shatt al Arab since 1935, when an
international commission gave Iraq total control of the Shatt al Arab, leaving
Iran with control only of the approaches to Abadan and Khorramshahr, its chief ports, and
unable to develop new port facilities in the delta.
The Tanker War,
1984-87
Naval operations came
to a halt, presumably because Iraq and
Iran had lost many of
their ships, by early 1981; the lull in the fighting lasted for two years. In
March 1984, Iraq initiated sustained
naval operations in its self-declared 1,126-kilometer maritime exclusion zone,
extending from the mouth of the Shatt al
Arab to
Iran's
port of
Bushehr. In 1981
Baghdad had attacked Iranian
ports and oil complexes as well as neutral tankers and ships sailing to and from
Iran; in 1984
Iraq expanded the
socalled tanker war by using French Super-Etendard combat aircraft armed with
Exocet missiles. Neutral merchant ships became favorite targets, and the
long-range Super-Etendards flew sorties farther south. Seventy-one merchant
ships were attacked in 1984 alone, compared with forty-eight in the first three
years of the war. Iraq's motives in
increasing the tempo included a desire to break the stalemate, presumably by
cutting off Iran's oil exports and by
thus forcing Tehran to the negotiating
table. Repeated Iraqi efforts failed to put
Iran's main oil exporting
terminal at Khark
Island out of commission,
however. Iran retaliated by attacking first a Kuwaiti oil tanker near Bahrain on
May 13 and then a Saudi tanker in Saudi waters five days later, making it clear
that if Iraq continued to interfere with Iran's shipping, no Gulf state would be
safe.
These sustained
attacks cut Iranian oil exports in half, reduced shipping in the Gulf by 25
percent, led Lloyd's of London to increase its insurance rates on tankers, and
slowed Gulf oil supplies to the rest of the world; moreover, the Saudi decision
in 1984 to shoot down an Iranian Phantom jet intruding in Saudi territorial
waters played an important role in ending both belligerents' attempts to
internationalize the tanker war. Iraq and Iran accepted a 1984 UN-sponsored
moratorium on the shelling of civilian targets, and Tehran later proposed an
extension of the moratorium to include Gulf shipping, a proposal the Iraqis
rejected unless it were to included their own Gulf ports.
Iraq began ignoring the
moratorium soon after it went into effect and stepped up its air raids on
tankers serving Iran and Iranian
oil-exporting facilities in 1986 and 1987, attacking even vessels that belonged
to the conservative Arab states of the Persian
Gulf.
Iran responded by
escalating its attacks on shipping serving Arab ports in the Gulf. As Kuwaiti
vessels made up a large portion of the targets in these retaliatory raids, the
Kuwaiti government sought protection from the international community in the
fall of 1986. The Soviet
Union responded first,
agreeing to charter several Soviet tankers to
Kuwait in early 1987.
Washington, which has been
approached first by Kuwait and which had
postponed its decision, eventually followed Moscow's lead.
United
States involvement was
sealed by the May 17,
1987, Iraqi missile
attack on the USS Stark, in which thirtyseven crew members were killed.
Baghdad apologized and
claimed that the attack was a mistake. Ironically,
Washington used the
Stark incident to blame Iran for escalating the
war and sent its own ships to the Gulf to escort eleven Kuwaiti tankers that
were "reflagged" with the American flag and had American crews.
Iran refrained from
attacking the United
States naval force
directly, but it used various forms of harassment, including mines, hit-and-run
attacks by small patrol boats, and periodic stop-and-search operations. On
several occasions, Tehran fired its
Chinese-made Silkworm missiles on Kuwait from Al Faw
Peninsula. When Iranian forces hit the reflagged tanker Sea Isle City in
October 1987, Washington retaliated by destroying an oil platform in the Rostam
field and by using the United States Navy's Sea, Air, and Land (SEAL) commandos
to blow up a second one nearby.
In early 1988, the
Gulf was a crowded theater of operations. At least ten Western navies and eight
regional navies were patrolling the area, the site of weekly incidents in which
merchant vessels were crippled. The Arab Ship Repair Yard in
Bahrain and its counterpart
in Dubayy,
United Arab
Emirates (UAE), were unable
to keep up with the repairs needed by the ships damaged in these attacks.
Al Thani
Family
Qatar became an independent country on
3 September
1971. In 1974, the Qatar General
Petroleum Corporation took control of all oil operations in the
country.
Qatar rapidly became a rich
country with a modern and well-developed infrastructure.
On
27 June 1995, His Highness Sheikh Hamad bin
Khalifa Al Thani assumed power with the support of the ruling family and the
Qatari people. With his accession Qatar entered a new era of
modernisation and embarked on the development of a strong base for
democracy.
A great social and political transformation is under
way.
Gulf Cooperation Council - GCC |
|
Saudi
Arabia was a prime mover in
setting up the Gulf Cooperation Council in 1981. Other members are
Bahrain,
Kuwait,
Oman,
Qatar and the United Arab
Emirates (UAE).
The Gulf Cooperation Council aims to
coordinate resistance to outside intervention in the Gulf. Progress
towards economic integration has been slow during the 1980s economic
downturn in the region.
The Gulf Cooperation Council seeks
to strengthen cooperation (in areas such as agriculture, industry,
investment, security, and trade) among its six members:
Bahrain,
Kuwait,
Quatar,
Oman,
Saudi
Arabia, and the
United Arab
Emirates.
The Gulf
Cooperation Council, created in response to the outbreach of the
Iran-Iraq war, established the Gulf Standards Organization in
November 1982 and the Gulf Investment Corporation in 1984.
The presidency of the Gulf Cooperation Council rotates
yearly among members. Council headquarters are in
Riyadh,
Saudi
Arabia. |
|
Hosni
Mubarak
In 1981, Mr. Mubarak
became President of the Arab Republic of Egypt and the Chairman of the National
Democratic Party. President Mubarak was re-elected by majority votes in
1987,1993, and 1999 for three successive terms.
Netback Pricing
An arrangement, by contract where
the price of natural gas purchased is based upon the resale price, less
transportation-related costs. Also, call a percentage of proceeds
contract.
New
York Mercantile Exchange
(NYMEX)
The
first U.S. exchange to trade natural gas
futures contracts and has contracts with Henry Hub, Permian and Canadian
delivery.
Natural Gas Policy Act of 1978 (NGPA)
A federal law adopted in phased-in
deregulation for gas discovered after 1977. Among other provisions, the NGPA
also established incentive prices for certain types of natural gas in order to
encourage increased exploration and production
Iran
Libya Sanctions
Act of 1996
Purpose:
The Iran and
Libya Sanctions Act of 1996 imposes new sanctions on foreign companies that
engage in specified economic transactions with
Iran or
Libya. It is
intended to: -- Help deny Iran and Libya revenues that could be used to finance
international terrorism; -- Limit the flow of resources necessary to obtain
weapons of mass destruction; and, -- Put pressure on Libya to comply with U.N.
resolutions that, among other things, call for Libya to extradite for trial the
accused perpetrators of the Pan Am 103 bombing.
The
Sanctions: The bill sanctions foreign companies that provide new investments
over $40 million for the development of petroleum resources in
Iran or
Libya. The bill
also sanctions foreign companies that violate existing U.N. prohibitions against
trade with Libya
in certain goods and services such as arms, certain oil equipment, and civil
aviation services. If a violation occurs, President Clinton is to impose two out
of seven possible sanctions against the violating company. These sanctions
include: -- denial of Export-Import Bank assistance; -- denial of export
licenses for exports to the violating company; -- prohibition on loans or
credits from U.S. financial institutions of over $10 million in any 12-month
period; -- prohibition on designation as a primary dealer for U.S. government
debt instruments; -- prohibition on serving as an agent of the United States or
as a repository for U.S. government funds; -- denial of U.S. government
procurement opportunities (consistent with WTO obligations); and -- a ban on all
or some imports of the violating company.