The Oil Coup

Mike Whitney ■ Here’s what’s happening: Washington has persuaded the Saudis to flood the market with oil to push down prices, decimate Russia’s economy, and reduce Moscow’s resistance to further NATO encirclement and the spreading of US military bases across Central Asia. The US-Saudi scheme has slashed oil prices by nearly a half since they hit their peak in June. The sharp decline in prices has burst the bubble in high-yield debt which has increased the turbulence in the credit markets while pushing global equities into a tailspin. Even so, the roiled markets and spreading contagion have not deterred Washington from pursuing its reckless plan, a plan which uses Riyadh’s stooge-regime to prosecute Washington’s global resource war.

William Engdahl ■ The Secret Stupid Saudi-US Deal on Syria
The details are emerging of a new secret and quite stupid Saudi-US deal on Syria and the so-called IS. It involves oil and gas control of the entire region and the weakening of Russia and Iran by Saudi Arabian flooding the world market with cheap oil. Details were concluded in the September meeting by US Secretary of State John Kerry and the Saudi King... the kingdom of Saudi Arabia, has been flooding the market with deep discounted oil, triggering a price war within OPEC… The Saudis are targeting sales to Asia for the discounts and in particular, its major Asian customer, China.

xymphora Alternative fairly tale ■ "The Oil Coup" This is likely completely backwards. Kerry probably went to see King Abdullah to try to talk him out of this crazy scheme, part of the ongoing manic-depressive influence of Prince Bandar, but the Saudis, furious with the Americans over the failure to remove Assad and the negotiations with Iran, want to pressure the Americans to follow a more Zionist line. Noticing this is noticing American Empire vulnerability, so we can't go there. Of course, we could even travel a stage higher in questioning the idea that the Saudis, as we're constantly told the 'swing producer' (despite the fact that numerous new sources of hydrocarbons have come on line in the last 20 years), actually have that much power at all. The collapse of oil prices is actually due to a collapse in world demand for oil caused by the complete collapse of the world economy caused by the predations of the 1% and neoliberalism, but we're really not supposed to notice this, so we need an alternative fairy tale.

Itar-Tass: Putin says oil-market price conspiracy between Saudi Arabia and US not ruled out