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View Full Version : The only thing standing between you and a $6 gallon of gas?



10thzodiac
07-11-06, 02:34 PM
Here's Baer's take, from his book Sleeping With the Devil:
Any oil extraction, production and delivery system relies on a large, mostly exposed exoskeleton. Add to that the topography of eastern Saudi Arabia, where the vast oil fields are located - an ocean of sand broken by shifting dunes, all of it sloping gently into the Persian Gulf - and you have a security consultant's worse nightmare. Taking down Saudi Arabia's oil infrastructure is like spearing fish in a barrel. It's not a question of opportunity; it's a question of how good your bang men are and what you give them to work with... One element that made Pearl Harbor such an attractive target in 1941 was so much American firepower, air and sea, boxed in such a small space. Even if a Japanese bomb missed its target, it was likely to find something worth blowing up. Tactically, the Saudi fields offer much the same sort of target environment. One scenario concluded that if terrorists were to simultaneously hit only five of the many sensitive points in Saudi Arabia's downstream oil system, they could put the Saudis out of the oil producing business for about two years.

Al Qaeda's Saudi branch (or should I say home office?) has already proven its "bang men" are very good indeed. And while I'm sure every effort has been made to eliminate as many vulnerabilities as possible, it's hard to believe the kingdom's oil infrastructure has been spared because Al Qaeda doesn't have the means to attack it.
Knocking Saudi Arabia out of the oil producing business for two years would bring the global economy to its knees - and probably bring about the fall of the House of Saud. In other words, it would be an enormous victory for Al Qaeda, the kind that would make the current fiasco in Iraq look like a paper cut. And there's not much the United States could do about it, even if it invaded and occupied the Saudi oil fields. Iraq has already demonstrated the futility of trying to guard something as inherently vulnerable and sprawling as an oil infrastructure against a determined saboteur movement.
So why is Al Qaeda still fooling around with these attacks on foreign workers? Is it because they don't want to alienate Saudi popular opinion by destroying the goose that lays the petroleum eggs? Are they hoping to inherit the oil infrastructure intact once they take power? Do they have a implicit deal with the royal family (or some faction within it) to limit their attacks to the infidel devils and leave the valuable stuff alone?
I could see the House of Saud offering such a deal (and trusting that the clueless Americans will never find out about it), but what motive would Al Qaeda have for abiding by it?
I don't have any obvious answers to this riddle - or at least, none that aren't wearing silly tinfoil hats. But think about it the next time you fill up your tank, because it's probably the only thing standing between you and a $6 gallon of gas.