@Kuwaiti Girl
As expected you could not provide empirical evidence of your baseless claim. There are 450 million Arabs worldwide so let's not discuss numbers here. The 500.000 or so Kuwaiti nationals of Iranian (some partial) origin (Iranian ARABS being a significant group here) are not only a tiny drop in the ocean but also fully Arabized and a considerably amount of them, as written before, have mixed with locals. Nor do they form 50% of all nationals.
Aside from that the entire political elite in Kuwait is native including the ruling family. There are more people of Arab or partial Arab origin in Iran than people of Iranian origin in the GCC . The GCC is the only place along with Iraq, although almost all have disappeared from Iraq for obvious reasons, in the Arab world where there is a presence of Iranian Arabs, Persians, Lur etc. at all to begin with.
Anyway as I wrote, you should go back to obsessing about KSA and Arabs "TurkoPersian" (ironically you are neither, lol) not to mention your ancestral homeland (the non-existing Baluchistan nation).
@Bilad al-Haramayn
His/her username was 'TurkoPersian' elsewhere, I have no idea why. I never heard that the person was half Balochi/English. Probably isn't though, most likely full Asian.
Whatever she/he is it's a troll of no importance so let it bark.
As you yourself noticed and apparently saw on that Iranian Mullah forum, she is obsessed about Arabs. I would not waste my time on him/her.
@Kuwaiti Girl
K dude, go have fun in Kuwait, there is nice weather, do some fun things there. Don't focus too much on wishing misery for another group of people. It brings nothing to the world, and it would affect Kuwait too, and lead region into more horrific and senseless violence.
Kuwait is a living hell during the summer. It's the hottest area in the MENA region alongside Southern Iraq and Southwestern Iran. Moreover Kuwait has been going downhill for decades.
Anyway to return to topic:
Here is a good example of sensationalist journalism:
http://money.cnn.com/2016/05/09/inv...rabia-cheap-oil/index.html?iid=hp-toplead-dom
"When Schreiber speaks, people sit up and pay attention. His 2014 prophesy reportedly led to a $1 billion profit for his firm."
Prophecy? For accurately predicting something that was already in progress? For knowing
basic economics? Crude was already dropping when he spoke it.
It also doesn't make him an expert on Saudi Arabia.
"The problem is Saudi Arabia needs oil prices at over $100 a barrel to break even on its budget."
The price to balance the budget is about 80$ not 100$
"The kingdom spends heavily on perks for its huge population of nearly 30 million. Now it's being forced to reverse some of those gifts, as highlighted by the recent 50% gas price hike."
Which isn't even the highest price gas has been in the past two decades.
"And Schreiber argues that Saudi Arabia's balance sheet is "overstated and misunderstood." He points to nearly $340 billion of liabilities that minimize the size of that rainy day fund. "
I'd really like to know what these liabilities are. Considering Saudi Arabia has the world's
lowest debt to GDP ratio
"These concerns may help explain why the Saudis are planning to sell off a 5% stake in the country's crown jewel: state-owned oil behemoth Aramco. "If they sell the golden goose, how do they fund anything? It's insane. Saudi is mortgaging away its future to buy time," said Schreiber."
Because, dear prophet who sees the future, Aramco doesn't actually own the oil. The government owns the reserves and
Aramco simply manages it.
The price of oil was even lower in the 90s and government debt to GDP reached a historic high of over 100% of GDP in 1999.
Yet, these days, when Saudi Arabia is in a much stronger position, all the doomsayers are trotted out to sell papers.
Arab News | Published — Thursday 12 May 2016
GOALS SET: Saudi Aramco President Amin Al-Nasser briefs visiting journalists at the company's headquarters in Dhahran
SHAYBAH: Reddish-brown sand dunes twist across the desert, their canyon-like ridges accentuated by late afternoon sun as a Saudi Aramco jet approaches the site of a remote gas plant.
“Not many people live down there,” the captain announces in an American accent.
The Empty Quarter, a vast desert in the southern Arabian Peninsula, conjures an image of what Mars might look like. But it is here that technological advances enabled Saudi Arabia’s state energy giant to build the plant, and drill for oil despite the isolation and harsh environment. The Shaybah facility stands at the heart of Saudi Aramco’s long-standing dominance of the world oil industry, and its path for the future.
“Of course the location of Shaybah is a challenge,” said Faisal Shihabuddin, a 28-year-old Saudi engineer among about 1,500 workers at the site. Despite the challenges, it has been successfully developed over the past 20 years “in the middle of nowhere,” he added.
Although global oil prices have collapsed, production is expanding at Shaybah, as it is in other units of the company at the center of the Kingdom’s Vision 2030 drive for diversification away from oil. The government plans to sell less than 5 percent of the firm in what officials say will be the world’s largest-ever share offering, while transforming Saudi Aramco into “a global industrial conglomerate”.
At Shaybah, that transformation was on display to foreign journalists invited for a rare tour.
Their shift finished, workers in hardhats and blue overalls walk out from a complex of pipes, stacks and holding tanks at Shaybah’s plant for Natural Gas Liquids as the sun drops behind.
Products of the plant, opened late last year, include propane and butane recovered from natural gas and used in petrochemical production, a focus of Saudi Aramco’s move away from simple oil extraction.
By 2020 the company says it will have tripled its gas processing capacity from levels at the turn of the century. “Our gas program is expanding significantly,” Saudi Aramco President Amin Al-Nasser said in Dhahran.
The company says gas will help reduce the amount of oil the Kingdom uses for electricity. It is also an ingredient for other industries, aiding diversification, while being more environmentally friendly than other fossil fuels — all goals of the Vision 2030.
More oil is also being pulled from rocks in a field of more than 600 square km below the soft Shaybah dunes.
“We’re going to 1 million (barrels per day) in two weeks,” said Anwar Al-Hejazi, the production manager.
That is an increase from Shaybah’s current 750,000 barrels a day and only a part of the Kingdom’s total daily output of more than 10 million barrels from inland and offshore fields.
Saudi Aramco manages the world’s second-largest crude oil reserves at 261.1 billion barrels, as well as 294 trillion standard cubic feet of natural gas reserves.
At Shaybah, drilling occurs underground at hundreds of wells controlled remotely by operators who receive data by satellite from tentacle-like probes exploring the rock.
The information appears as squiggly lines resembling an electrocardiogram on their computer consoles at a room like a small lecture hall in Dhahran.
At a bigger control center, about half the length of a football pitch, the Kingdom’s entire hydrocarbon stock is monitored on multicolored floor-to-ceiling screens.
Dispatchers sit at several semi-circular stations monitoring flow and pressure data “to listen to the heartbeat of the system” and ensure its safety, said Abdullah Al-Mansour, manager of the Oil Supply Planning and Scheduling Center. Along with graphs and other numerical displays, the screens show icons of tanker ships on an electronic calendar.
The work is so sensitive and vital that cameras are forbidden and a smaller backup center has been readied elsewhere, Al-Mansour said.
The center is located within a series of modern gray office buildings, around a pedestrian plaza, that include a research center and a training facility for engineers and geoscientists.
Among its tools is a three-dimensional theater where trainees can virtually travel into the layers of oil, gas and water under the Shaybah sands.
For Shaybah-based workers like Abdullah Al-Aiderous, Dhahran is a weekly refuge, reached by Saudi Aramco’s own fleet of passenger planes flying into the company’s private terminal.
Al-Aiderous, a 31-year-old senior operations adviser, said living in Shaybah “basically reminds you of college life.”
He is among the 84 percent of the company’s roughly 66,000 employees who are Saudi.
Shihabuddin, the Shaybah-based engineer, said working in the desert outpost is not so hard, “except that you’re far away from home. Beside that, everything is available here.”
Well, not exactly.
Dhahran has “The Camp”, home to 20,000 in what resembles suburban America with bungalows and parks. Dhahran and other major Aramco facilities even have their own cinemas.
At Shaybah, the best show is the sun setting behind the dunes in the quiet wilderness, before orange lights from the gas facility glow in the vast darkness around it.
http://www.arabnews.com/news/realizing-vision-2030
ARAB NEWS | Published — Tuesday 10 May 2016
JEDDAH: The manufacturing sector will continue to play a vital role in accelerating economic development and that the number of factories in the Kingdom are expected to increase to 9,000 by the year 2018, say experts.
“It (manufacturing sector) is one of the pillars included in the Saudi Vision of 2030 plan to support the gross domestic product. The expectation is that the industrial sector will account for 24 percent of Saudi Arabia’s GDP by 2020,” one of the business experts was quoted as saying by local media on Saturday.
They stressed that 2,000 more factories will be established in the next two years, as stated by the minister of commerce and industry in the Euro-money Conference.
Mutlaq Al-Qahtani, former head of the Jubail Industrial Chamber, said the industrial sector has received unlimited support in the Kingdom. “The number of plants rose to 6,871 by the end of 2015, with almost 1 million workers employed there. The number of factories is expected to rise to 9,000 by 2018 with a workforce of more than a million.”
The Kingdom realized successful experiences through the big industrial cities and the new visions will perpetuate this in terms of modernization of national industry, he said while appreciating the government for its efforts to develop the manufacturing sector.
Mohammed Rashid, chairman of the Chamber of Industry in Qassim, said the success of the industrial sector depends on the introduction of new measures such as resettlement rates and raising the proportion of manpower from the least expensive of countries.
He said that improving competitiveness of local products on the global level is necessary, not only to gain stakes in the exports market but also to maintain the domestic market shares. Also, industrial units in the Kingdom will have to raise productivity and quality.
“We need to face the challenges together with the efforts of the government, and in cooperation with the private and foreign sectors, to develop a healthy business environment in the Kingdom,” said Rashid.
http://www.arabnews.com/news/manufacturing-play-key-role-realizing-vision-2030
MOHAMMED RASOOLDEEN | Published — Thursday 12 May 2016
RIYADH: The new Commerce and Investment Minister Majid Al-Qassabi pledged on Tuesday to work hard and do his best to achieve the aspirations of the wise leadership in accordance with the Kingdom’s 2030 Vision.
The minister was speaking in Madinah at the Third Awards Ceremony for Excellent Government Performance in the presence of Madinah Gov. Prince Faisal bin Salman.
On behalf of his ministry, Al-Qassabi received the Award for Excellent Government Performance from the governor.
The MCI branch in Madinah won the Gold Award for consumer satisfaction and the Bronze Award for serving and employing citizens with special needs.
Last year, the MCI branch in Madinah grabbed the Silver Award. This year, 136 government departments in the Madinah region participated.
The minister said: “I extend my thanks and appreciation to Prince Faisal bin Salman for his kind support to enhance competitiveness among the government departments to achieve citizens’ needs by offering high-quality services.”
Al-Qasabi thanked his predecessor, Dr. Tawfiq Al-Rabiah, for his immense contributions to the prestigious award given in recognition of the MCI’s services.
Government departments participating in this contest in Madinah were subject to special evaluation criteria set by the authority in charge of this program, where a number of workshops were held.
The participating government departments were informed earlier of the guidelines of the competition.
The Ministry of Commerce and Investment recently launched the new Corporate Law to enhance the value of companies and to promote their trade activities to contribute to the development of the national economy.
The new law, which came into force in early May, one of the most prominent economic regulations for sustainable development, is issued by the state to provide an economic environment to be as incubator and a source of incentives for initiatives and investment.
The new law aims to enhance company value and to develop activities and contributions for serving the national economy. It also contributes in reducing procedure costs and encouraging business activity initiatives so as to promote the Kingdom’s leading position and its competitive advantages, and encourage more investments from entrepreneurs of small and medium enterprises.
The new system provides the appropriate legal framework for the practice of fair and sound corporate governance principles, institutional concepts, and supports the growth and continuity of economic entities, besides improving the institutional performance and the integrity of business transactions through the application of sound and fair standards of transparency and disclosure.
The new system will give a greater role to the shareholders’ associations and boards of directors in shaping corporate strategies and their companies’ responsibilities and activities.
MCI jurisdiction includes all companies except joint stock companies listed on the Saudi Stock Exchange, where the supervision and control of such companies would be under the jurisdiction of the Capital Market Authority.
http://www.arabnews.com/news/al-qassabi-pledges-work-hard-achieve-2030-goals
Not sure what this has to do with the topic at hand but this is better:
KSA should invest in more circuits and international races. Lot's of talented drivers. Formula 1 is already in nearby Bahrain and UAE and has been for quite some time.