industryterm:oil resources

Interview de Toby Matthiesen "Research Fellow at Cambridge University", et auteur de deux livres sur le confessionnalisme, qui est considéré comme un "expert sur les Shiites dans le Golfe" :
Saudi Arabia and “The Shia Threat”
▻http://en.iranwire.com/features/6614

Saudi Arabia and Iran are well-established regional rivals. Why is this?

Looking at it from a geostrategic perspective, they dominate one of the most important regions in the world, the Persian Gulf. So regardless of ideology and religion, they are bound to be natural rivals for regional hegemony. The vast oil resources at the disposal of both countries have also allowed them to export their rivalry throughout the wider MENA region and beyond in a way that resource-poor countries could never have done. Having said that, the Saudi-Iranian rivalry is complicated by a religious and ideological rivalry that overlaps with the strategic and geopolitical rivalry. Both countries have used their particular interpretation of Islam in their foreign policies.
Saudi Arabia “invented” Islamic foreign policy under King Faisal so as to better withstand Arab Nationalist denouncements led by Egyptian President Nasser. It established a whole range of international Islamic organisations and wanted to be seen as the unrivalled leader of the Islamic World. The Islamic Revolution in Iran undermined this notion, because the revolution sought (and in the beginning sometimes did) appeal to all Muslims, regardless of whether they were Sunni or Shia. So the sectarian card was very much a way in which Saudi Arabia (and other Sunni-led states that felt vulnerable to the appeal of the Islamic revolution) could undermine the umma [Muslim]-wide appeal of the Islamic Revolution in Iran.
Having said that, Iran immediately tried to export its revolution, and found this task easiest amongst Shia groups around the world. Arab Shia were a particular focus of Iran’s efforts to export the revolution, as symbolised by the establishing of Hizbullah in Lebanon. But Iran also supported Shia in the Gulf monarchies Kuwait, Bahrain and Saudi Arabia. So both sides have in a way led a sectarian foreign policy that has inflamed sectarian relations across the Arab and Islamic worlds.
Nevertheless, the Sunni-Shia rivalry is not the root cause of the Saudi-Iranian rivalry. In many ways, the Sunni-Shia rivalry that we see today is an outcome of the Saudi-Iranian rivalry for regional hegemony.

Chomsky: U.S. Spawned a Fundamentalist Frankenstein in the Mideast
▻http://www.alternet.org/books/chomsky-us-spawned-fundamentalist-frankenstein-mideast

Like Britain before it, the US has tended to support radical Islam and to oppose secular nationalism, which both imperial states have regarded as more threatening to their goals of domination and control. When secular options are crushed, religious extremism often fills the vacuum. Furthermore, the primary US ally over the years, Saudi Arabia, is the most radical Islamist state in the world and also a missionary state, which uses its vast oil resources to promulgate its extremist Wahabi/Salafi doctrines by establishing schools, mosques, and in other ways, and has also been the primary source for the funding of radical Islamist groups, along with Gulf Emirates - all US allies.

It’s worth noting that religious fanaticism is spreading in the West as well, as democracy erodes. The US is a striking example. There are not many countries in the world where the large majority of the population believes that God’s hand guides evolution, and almost half of these think that the world was created a few thousand years ago. And as the Republican Party has become so extreme in serving wealth and corporate power that it cannot appeal to the public on its actual policies, it has been compelled to rely on these sectors as a voting base, giving them substantial influence on policy.

Le Moyen Orient reste incontournable pour approvisionner le monde en hydrocarbures.

IEA - November:- Light tight oil does not diminish the importance of Middle East supply, IEA says in latest World Energy Outlook
▻http://www.iea.org/newsroomandevents/pressreleases/2013/november/name,44368,en.html

Light tight oil does not diminish the importance of Middle East supply, IEA says in latest World Energy Outlook

Report sees large disparities in regional energy prices affecting industrial competitiveness

12 November 2013

Technology and high prices are opening up new oil resources, but this does not mean the world is on the verge of an era of oil abundance, according to the International Energy Agency’s (IEA) 2013 edition of the World Energy Outlook (WEO-2013). Although rising oil output from North America and Brazil reduces the role of OPEC countries in quenching the world’s thirst for oil over the next decade, the Middle East – the only large source of low-cost oil – takes back its role as a key source of oil supply growth from the mid-2020s.

The annual report, released today in London, presents a central scenario in which global energy demand rises by one-third in the period to 2035. The shift in global energy demand to Asia gathers speed, but China moves towards a back seat in the 2020s as India and countries in Southeast Asia take the lead in driving consumption higher. The Middle East also moves to centre stage as an energy consumer, becoming the world’s second-largest gas consumer by 2020 and third-largest oil consumer by 2030, redefining its role in global energy markets. Brazil, a special focus in WEO-2013, maintains one of the least carbon-intensive energy sectors in the world, despite experiencing an 80% increase in energy use to 2035 and moving into the top ranks of global oil producers. Energy demand in OECD countries barely rises and by 2035 is less than half that of non-OECD countries. Low-carbon energy sources meet around 40% of the growth in global energy demand. In some regions, rapid expansion of wind and solar PV raises fundamental questions about the design of power markets and their ability to ensure adequate investment and long-term reliability.

“Major changes are emerging in the energy world in response to shifts in economic growth, efforts at decarbonisation and technological breakthroughs,” said IEA Executive Director Maria van der Hoeven. “We have the tools to deal with such profound market change. Those that anticipate global energy developments successfully can derive an advantage, while those that do not risk taking poor policy and investment decisions.”

The availability and affordability of energy is a critical element of economic well-being and, in many countries, also of industrial competitiveness. Natural gas in the United States currently trades at one-third of import prices to Europe and one-fifth of those to Japan. Average Japanese or European industrial consumers pay more than twice as much for electricity as their counterparts in the United States, and even China’s industry pays almost double the US level. In WEO-2013, large variations in energy prices persist through to 2035, affecting company strategies and investment decisions in energy-intensive industries. The United States sees its share of global exports of energy-intensive goods slightly increase to 2035, providing the clearest indication of the link between relatively low energy prices and the industrial outlook. By contrast, the European Union and Japan see their share of global exports decline – a combined loss of around one-third of their current share.