To carry out their sinister schemes, Al-Qaida terrorists will hit Saudi petroleum projects and Western experts employed there, Professor al-Oteibi forecast in an interview The Arab Times is carrying in today's issue.
Saudi Arabia is a formidable target. An OPEC pillar, it extracts a daily nine million barrels of export-oriented petroleum. As OPEC countries' ministers gather for an extraordinary conference in Beirut, June 3, Saudi Arabia will insist on the summary extraction and export ceiling raised to two million barrels for all eleven member countries-that to settle down global petroleum prices.
Developments are taking a tragic turn as four terrorists attacked Saudi Arabia Saturday last, May 29. They raided the Al-Waha neighbourhood and several oil company offices in Al-Khobar, major Saudi town, to take hostages. 22 died in the raid, and 25 were injured-foreigners, for the most part. Al-Qaida of the Arabian Peninsula, the organisation that owned up, had been in utter obscurity to that day.
The online newspaper Al-Bawwaba is offering an analysis of the bloodshed. The tragedy came in an oil- and gas-rich area-supposedly, well guarded. Hence public apprehensions of whether Saudi Arabia can provide safety at all. The newspaper expects foreigners-Americans, in the first place-to flee.
Terror acts in Saudi Arabia's fabulously rich east make the Al-Bawwaba assume that Al-Qaida is out for an impact on world petroleum prices to trigger off a global economic depression. The paper expects Saudi oil extraction to skyrocket so as to convince the world that the kingdom's petroleum industry will perform as smoothly as ever, terrorism or no terrorism.
