Comments by "David Himmelsbach" (@davidhimmelsbach557) on "Saudi Arabia's Oil Problem" video.

@-argih Nope. Chavez fired his own native oil industry experts -- a generation ago. Then Venezuela went off the rails. After driving off his own expert people, Chavez went crazy ramping up government expenditures. No funds were ever allocated towards planned repairs -- any maintenance. It's now so bad that even obtaining water and power is an iffy thing. Yet Venezuela is blessed with more natural resources than you can shake a stick at: gold, oil, lumber, rain, sweet water -- and hot women.
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The KSA problem is monarchy -- and the cultural tics that come with same. Namely that the ENTIRE society fully expects the king to provide for them, cradle to grave. In return, the subjects provide absolute loyalty. They don't provide birth restraint in any way. So the Saudi population has absolutely exploded over the decades. An exponential population expansion mated with rising per capita economic expectations = pure trouble when the game is up. The Saudis -- and their peers -- have reached such a point that they dare not throttle back oil exports -- as by this stage -- the resulting income is being expended almost immediately. What had been a staggering surplus has been faded way, way back. MBS can see the kingdom's cash flow turning negative -- all too soon. In the most immediate future, MBS is going to have to simply increase oil exports -- to buy time -- but without crashing OPEC pricing. Then he's going to make every effort to semi-normalize the Saudi economy -- that is -- transition his subjects into adults -- not dependents.
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KSA may have been established in the 20th Century but it never became culturally modern. Oil had long been discovered across the Gulf in Persia/ Iran. So only an idiot would fail to see that the geology of KSA figured to be but a mirror of Iran. Even Chevron's first six-wells established that much. That it took seven punches to find the largest oil deposit on Earth -- well, that's kind of amazing, no?
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@Sedna063 Yeah, but check out the TFR of Yemen. It's what's driving the brutal conflict there. Politically, culturally, Yemen and KSA are linked at the hip. Bin Laden was a YEMENI born to a Yemeni father and a Saudi woman. He was dad's #17, BTW. When OBL founded his Black Watch (personal body guard) it was ethnically pure: Yemeni straight through. His larger over-all goal was to liquidate the Saudi house -- and one must presume -- replace it with his own. (He was ultra-active with the ladies, too.) Ever since the heady days of 1974, Yemen has provided the man-power for the kingdom's construction industry. They started out working just shovels. But, with time, have come to be the Big Wheels in the Saudi's industry. So you really have to attach the astounding TFR of Yemen -- and its consequences -- to that of the KSA. How this is all going to end is still very much up in the air. That the fighting in, over and about Yemen is critical to the future of the KSA is obvious to everyone in Arabia. This is not a side-show war... which the MSM would have you believe.
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