Saudi Arabia

Two weeks ago Zero Hedge claimed that Saudi Arabian "gestures" to hike crude output were about as hollow as the heads of those suggesting that dealing with surging oil prices involves reducing interest rates even more (which just happen to be at zero already), mostly as a result of the country's recent adoption of "whorism" or its doomed strategy to buy the love of its citizens. The reason is that as UBS' Andy Lees noted, Saudi "will need to ramp up production by about 10% (more capital spending) without prices falling" to fill the suddenly gaping budget hole left from literally throwing $37 billion out of Bernanke's leased helicopter. Yesterday, BusinessWeek's Peter Coy essentially reaffirmed our theory verbatim in the piece "Saudi Arabia Must Keep Pumping Oil to Buy Stability"... needless to say we completely agree with this. Obviously, the bigger issue here is that as WikiLeaks recently suggested, and was reconfirmed by Jim Rogers, Saudi Arabia is simply lying about its excess capacity. Because if Saudi had indeed raised output as many have hoped for, and as Saudi has represented, it would have made up for the funding differential simply by the hike in export volume. Instead, as Reuters reports, Saudi Aramco just hiked prices on oil to customers in Asia and Europe up substantially. This, at least to us, does not appear like the rational action of a player seeking to moderate surging oil prices to avoid further social conflict, and one who can plug offline capacity.

Proving that Saudi Arabia is a fast learner from both China's and America's experience, today Saudi's interior minister announced he is banning all protests, marches and strikes following the world's realization courtesy of the clip posted on Zero Hedge yesterday, showing that not all is well in the kingdom in which protests are banned. Dow Jones reports: "Top oil exporter Saudi Arabia has banned all protests, marches and strikes in the kingdom after small protests continued over the weekend in the oil-rich Eastern province towns of al-Ahsa and Qatif, interior ministry said Saturday, according to state-owned channel al Ekhbariyah.  These activities don't conform with the Islamic laws and harm the interests of the nation and the society, the Saudi channel quoted the ministry as saying." What does, however, comply with Islamic law is openly using your plunge protection team to bid up the market: "Saudi stocks rose for the first time in three weeks, rallying the most in more than two years, after the finance minister said the Arab world’s largest economy is benefitting from higher oil prices and in “excellent” shape... The state-run General Organization for Social Insurance also purchased stocks, according to Ajeej Capital’s Fuad Aghabi." Not letting a crisis go to waste, Saudi has quickly learned Econ 101 and is now advising its citizens that America's massive economic contraction is its personal gain. And if that doesn't work, it will just use its pension fund to bid up stocks, as a massively Marked to Myth market is apparently in everyone's interest: just ask the Chairsatan.

All those naively hoping that Saudi Arabia has suddenly developed some altruistic bent and will act against its own interest by increasing excess production (which according to Jim Rogers it simply does not have), to keep oil prices lower, are advised to reevaluate. According to CBS, citing "the conclusion of an internal report prepared by a major investment firm based on information from its extensive and knowledgeable contacts within OPEC" Saudi Arabia won’t take "significant steps to bring down the price of crude oil until Brent, the grade traded most on the open market, reaches $120 a barrel, about 8 percent above current levels." More from CBS: "In the report, which was made available to MoneyWatch on the condition that the firm not be named because briefings with its contacts are off the record, the OPEC sources reiterate their earlier analysis of the oil market, which has proven to be on the nose. They contend that the delicate political situation  across the Middle East and North Africa - including the fragile state of affairs within Saudi borders - is preventing the kingdom from doing the sensible economic thing and increasing production to keep prices under control." Which simply means that Rogers and all those doubting the veracity of Saudi's motives, not to mention the kingdom's rhetoric that it has boosted output to over 9 million bbls/day, have been correct, and the supply/demand dynamics of the stock market have been largely unchanged since Libya took over 1.6 million barrels of oil from the market.

Jim Rogers joins Zero Hedge in being highly skeptical about just how credible Saudi's call for a 1MM + boost in its oil supply is: "Saudi Arabia has been lying about the reserves for decades. Saudi Arabia the last two times said they are going to increase production and they couldn't increase production. Don't fall for that. The reason oil is going up is the world is running out of known reserves of oil." Of course, then there is the question of do we trust the Quantum fund creator who retired at 37, or do we go with the sellside lemming brigade of monkeys with typewriters who will groupthink anything and everything to death, just to get paid another completely unwarranted bonus. As to those who are concerned that the commodity "bubble" is about to pop, Rogers says: "It's still years away." And some reinforcement for the gold and silver bulls: "Gold will certainly go over $2,000 by the end of the decade, and silver will pass $50." And as a hedge to his great commodity bull market call, Rogers continues to be short Nasdaq stocks. His thesis: "If the economy gets better I am going to make money in commodities, if it doesn't get better, I am going to make money in commodities cause they are going to print huge amounts of money." Call it the adjusted Tepper call.

Saudi Arabia continues being on an excess capacity roll. After totally butchering the concepts of apples and oranges, specifically as pertains to light sweet and heavy sour, with the market apparently stupid enough not to know the difference, and somehow promising it can make up for lost Libyan output last week when in reality it is in desperate need to export more oil to balance its budget, the increasingly troubled country now is seen as the natural backstop to Oman disruptions. Reuters reports: "Oil prices turned lower on Monday as reassurances from Saudi Arabia that extra supply needs had been met soothed market fears over the spread of protests to oil-producer Oman. Violent uprisings in OPEC member Libya dramatically reduced exports from North Africa, but Saudi Aramco CEO Khalid al-Falih told reporters on Monday the shortfall had been made up. Falih refused to give exact figures, but an industry source on Friday said the top exporter's output had risen to more than 9 million barrels per day (bpd). This compared with roughly 8.3 million bpd in January, according to a Reuters survey." Of course, whether or not there is any actual hike in production in a country long rumored to be vastly exaggerating its spare capacity, we will only know months from now. In the meantime, Saudi will gladly take the few days of stability sub-$100 WTI grants the world, while it decides how to handle increasingly more beligerent neighbors Yemen, Oman and Bahrain.

As we reported yesterday, Saudi Arabia which following its latest recreation of Helicopter Ben's money parachuting experiment to buy its people's love, suddenly has found itself in a fiscal crunch, has no choice but to increase general oil sales revenues. Which is why as Reuters reports the kingdom, which many speculate may be next to see a spike in protests in early March, has just hiked its oil output by 8% to over 9 million barrels per day. The move, in addition to yesterday's margin hikes by both the CME and ICE, has forced oil prices to decline modestly, bringing some stability to an otherwise extremely jittery market, which would also further exacerbate geopolitical tensions. "The Saudi move follows reassurances from Riyadh earlier in the week that it was prepared to act to prevent shortages as a result of the rebellion in Libya against leader Muammar Gaddafi that has sharply reduced the fellow OPEC producer's 1.3 million bpd of exports." What is unclear is how Iran, an OPEC member, will respond to this unilateral action out of an otherwise "collective" oil cartel. We continue to expect that as a result of a widening political schism between the OPEC member nations, and the ongoing turbulence in Libya, that OPEC will be soon "restructured" materially.

That latest entrant to the "whorism" political class, Saudi Arabia, is getting desperate. After yesterday's attempt to prostitute itself out to its people by literally handing out $37 billion in a glaring demonstration that it has never heard the "money can't buy you love" saying, now the FT is reporting that "Saudi Arabia is in “active talks” with European oil companies to meet the production shortfall left by Libya, the clearest indication to date that the leader of the Opec oil cartel is about to boost supplies to stop further rises in the oil price, which surged to near $120 a barrel on Thursday." The FT's commentary is partially correct: "You can only expect the price to go up. It is fear of the unknown. The risks are all to the upside,” one senior oil trader said. "Saudi Arabia needs to respond." It does, but not to fill the gap. Following the latest attempt at recreating Helicopter Ben's monetary policy, Saudi Arabia suddenly finds itself clutching at cash straws.As UBS' Andrew Lees points out: "Saudi's USD37bn bonus to the population equates to USD10.45bbl on its 2009 production of 9.7m bpd. Saudi already needed USD74bbl to balance its budget in 2008. In December last year the talk was that its budget deficit would be 40bn riyals having been 86.5bn riyals the previous year as it spent heavily on salary increases for soldiers. With this increased spending it seems Saudi will need about USD85 - USD95bbl to balance its budget, or it will need to ramp up production by about 10% (more capital spending) without prices falling." Oops. Do you see what happens Larry when a country hands out money it doesn't have? We hope for Saudi's sake that it has some POMO desk interns running things there as effectively as in the US. But until we get some confirmation, we continue to back the truck up with Saudi CDS, a process which started when these were first quoted in the double digits.

With the facebook revolutions having claimed virtually every other country in the region, the time may be coming for that most important one of all. And if Facebook is to be relied on for its revolutionary calendar, a job it has so far done without reproach, the revolutionary wave will come to Saudi Arabia on March 20. That will also the day crude passes $200.

While the biggest threat to the Middle East region is the possibility that the population of Saudi Arabia may try to imitate what has been happening in the area, thereby bringing total chaos to the established regional geopolitical and more importantly, energy, structure, the first protests in the Saudi Arabia city of Jeddah are already in the books. The clip below shows the peaceful demonstrations that have taken place recently, which as Fedupmontrealer explains are "taking place in front of the Municipality in protest of the severe lack
of infrastructure, and corruption, that led the city to be inundated this week causing billions of dollars of damages for the second time in two years." That this is even occurring in a state where the average wealth is orders of magnitude greater than in Egypt is remarkable. On the other hand, we expect more news such as those from yeserday that Kuwait is paying its citizens $3,500 plus free food for a year to keep calm. Oddly, visions of money dropping helicopters, infinitely extendable unemployment insurance and tax breaks keep dancing in our head. Those who wish to follows the latest developments out of Jedda which appears could be the lightning rod for Saudi riots can do so by tracking #JeddahProtests on Twitter.

The promise of green energy has intrigued the Middle East, where concern about future reserves runs deep, but Saudi Arabia's recent plan for a multibillion-dollar investment in traditional oil projects underscores lingering concern about betting on renewables. Riyadh plans to spend $170 billon over the next five years on energy and oil refining efforts; the country's state-owned oil company, Saudi Aramco, will bankroll little more than half this endeavor, according to the Saudi Gazette. The energy giant called it unrealistic for Saudi Arabia to plow into alternative energy sources when the No. 1 cash crop of oil has built its wealth, the report states. "I don’t think that’s surprising,” said Eurasia Group energy analyst Will Pearson of the guarded approach, adding that Saudi Aramco has long been hesitant given the state’s status as the world’s leading oil producer.