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Saudi Arabia: Riyadh To Reopen Embassy In Baghdad After 25 Years

A Saudi delegation will travel to Baghdad in the coming week to start preparations to reopen an embassy in the Iraqi capital for the first time in 25 years, the Saudi Press Agency said Jan. 3, Reuters reported. The Saudi Press Agency also said Riyadh planned to set up a general consulate in Arbil. Saudi Arabia closed its Baghdad embassy in 1990 after former Iraqi dictator Saddam Hussein invaded Kuwait. The diplomatic effort comes as Saudi Arabia continues to compete with Iran for influence in the region .

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King Abdullah of Saudi Arabia Is Hospitalized With Pneumonia

King Abdullah of Saudi Arabia has pneumonia and needs temporary help from a breathing tube, the royal court said Friday. The king, who is 90, has a history of medical problems, and his health is scrutinized for any hint of a leadership change in Saudi Arabia , an absolute monarchy and regional American ally that is one of the world’s most important oil producers. In a statement quoted by news agencies, the royal court said the king was in stable condition at a military hospital. He was transferred there on Thursday after having been admitted to King Abdulaziz Medical City Hospital in Riyadh, the capital, on Wednesday for unspecified tests. The statement said an examination “revealed pneumonia, which required the provisional insertion of a tube on Friday evening.” It added that “that step was crowned with stability and success,” but it left unclear how long the king would remain […]

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Saudi Arabia’s Half-Off Sale On Crude Oil

Saudi Arabia’s Half-Off Sale on Crude Oil. Global Demand Strong Despite Weakness in OECD. Supply Issues Remain in the Hands of Saudi Aramco. Why would anyone sell seven widgets for $50 a widget (total revenue: $350) when they could sell six of the widgets for $100 per widget (total revenue: $600) and just keep the seventh widget in a garage to sell later? No rational person would do this, unless there were other considerations at work. Yet this is precisely the current situation with Saudi oil exports. Few people doubt that Saudi Arabia could have held oil prices in the $100 per barrel range by cutting exports to six million barrels per day (bpd) as it did previously on several occasions over the past three years. Instead, Saudi oil exports have remained in the seven million bpd range. This together with weak demand in Europe and Japan (two of […]

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Iran says Saudi Arabia should move to curb oil price fall

DUBAI (Reuters) – Falling world oil prices will hurt countries across the Middle East unless Saudi Arabia, the world’s biggest crude exporter, takes action to reverse the slump, Iran’s deputy foreign minister told Reuters. Hossein Amir Abdollahian described Saudi Arabia’s inaction in the face of a six-month slide in oil prices as a strategic mistake and said he still hoped the kingdom, Tehran’s main rival in the Gulf, would respond. Oil prices closed on Wednesday at a 5-1/2 year low, registering their second-biggest ever annual decline after OPEC oil exporters, led by Saudi Arabia, chose to maintain oil output despite a global glut and calls from some of the cartel’s members – including Iran and Venezuela – to cut production. "There are several reasons for the drop of the price of oil but Saudi Arabia can take a step to have a productive role in this situation," Abdollahian said. […]

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Saudi King undergoing medical tests in Riyadh hospital: state TV

DUBAI (Reuters) – Saudi Arabia’s elderly King Abdullah bin Abdulaziz was admitted to a hospital in the capital Riyadh on Wednesday for medical tests, state media reported on Wednesday, citing a royal court statement. King Abdullah was born in the court of his father, King Abdulaziz Ibn Saud, in the early 1920s. The softly-spoken monarch, who took power in 2005 after the death of King Fahd, has undergone surgery in the past few years related to a herniated disc. "The Custodian of the Two Holy Mosques, King Abdullah bin Abdulaziz, may God keep him, entered today Wednesday … the King Abdulaziz Medical City of the National Guard in Riyadh to undergo some medical tests," the statement said, according to state news agency SPA. State media last week reported that King Abdullah had left Riyadh for his desert farm at Rawdat Khuraim northeast of the capital. (Writing by Yara Bayoumy; […]

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Saudis hit ‘panic button’ at $40 oil

Saudi Arabia has insisted that OPEC will keep oil production at 30 million barrels per day no matter the cost of crude, but even the world’s biggest oil exporter has a limit, the CEO of Breitling Energy told CNBC on Friday. “I think the panic button is at $40,” Chris Faulkner said in a “Squawk Box” interview. “They can say whatever they want, but at the end of the day, they can’t just bleed out money forever.” With the Saudis’ deficit for 2015 projected to reach $50 billion—the official figure is $39 billion—the country’s leaders will face challenges in maintaining its subsidies, he said. Young people will not stand for planned wage cuts, either, he added. That said, Faulkner expects oil prices to rebound to the low $70s by the end of 2015, after initially sliding further into the low $50s and possibly recovering in the second quarter. With […]

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Saudi 2015 budget based on oil price around $60

* Government doesn’t publish oil price assumption in budget * But finance minister indicates it’s close to current levels * Budget cuts oil price assumption for first time since 2009 * Disagreement over when oil will rebound – minister Saudi Arabia’s 2015 state budget assumes an oil price close to current levels of around $60 a barrel for Brent crude, a shift from past budgets which were based on prices well below market levels, analysts say. The kingdom doesn’t reveal the oil prices which it uses to calculate its annual budgets. So analysts estimate them, making assumptions about several other variables such as planned oil exports and production for the following year. For the 2015 budget, announced on Thursday, four analysts’ oil price estimates are in a range of $55 to $63. That does not mean Saudi Arabia necessarily expects such prices next year — Finance Minister Ibrahim Alassaf […]

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Saudi Arabia Maintains Spending Plans in 2015 Despite Oil Slide

ENLARGE Saudi King Abdullah struck a note of caution in the budget announcement. Reuters/Saudi Press Agency/Handout DAMMAM, Saudi Arabia—The Saudi government unveiled a 2015 budget on Thursday that signaled a continuation of a high level of spending despite pressures from a steep fall in oil prices in recent months. The kingdom, the world’s top oil exporter, depends on oil revenue to fund social spending, helping head off the kind of unrest that has roiled Middle Eastern countries since 2011. A prolonged oil-price slump could threaten such policies here and in other Gulf monarchies. Saudi King Abdullah struck a note of caution in the budget announcement, instructing officials to consider the developments that led to oil’s decline by “rationalizing the expenditure.” Riyadh has chosen not to cut output in an effort to push up prices, despite its dependence on oil exports. The Saudi oil minister, Ali al-Naimi—secretary-general of the Organization […]

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Saudi Arabia Vows to Ride Out Oil Price Slump

ABU DHABI, United Arab Emirates — The world’s top petroleum exporter, Saudi Arabia , said on Sunday that it would not cut output to prop up oil markets even if nations outside OPEC did so, in one of the strongest signals that it planned to ride out the market’s biggest slump in years. Referring to countries that are not members of the Organization of the Petroleum Exporting Countries, Ali Al-Naimi, the oil minister of Saudi Arabia, told reporters: “If they want to cut production they are welcome. We are not going to cut, certainly Saudi Arabia is not going to cut.” He added that he was “100 percent not pleased” with prices but said they would improve, although when was unclear. He said speculators were responsible for the fall in prices to half their levels of six months ago and what he called a lack of cooperation from non- […]

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Age of Plenty Seen Over for Gulf Arabs as Oil Tumbles

The boom that adorned Gulf Arab monarchies with glittering towers, swelled their sovereign funds and kept unrest largely at bay may be over after oil prices dropped by almost 50 percent in the last six months. The sheikhdoms have used the oil wealth to remake their region. Landmarks include man-made islands on reclaimed land, as well as financial centers, airports and ports that turned the Arabian desert into a banking and travel hub. The money was also deployed to ward off social unrest that spread through the Middle East during the Arab Spring. “The region has had 10 years of abundance,” said Simon Williams , HSBC Holdings Plc’s chief economist for central and eastern Europe , the Middle East and North Africa. “But that decade of plenty is done. The drop in oil prices will hurt performance in the near term, even if the Gulf’s buffers are powerful enough […]

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