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Deportee in Saudi killed in detention center riot

A Saudi police spokesman says a foreign detainee died and nine others were injured in a riot at a center housing people awaiting deportation. Police spokesman Lieutenant Colonel Ati bin Attiya al-Qarshi said in a statement Monday that some of the foreign detainees at the al-Shemaisi center had rioted Sunday evening and clashed with security men. He did not give the reasons for rioting or reveal the victims’ nationalities. Yemeni online forums reported that 10 Yemenis were killed when police opened fire on rioters demanding that Saudi authorities speed up their deportation. The reports say between 6,000 to 10,000 Yemenis are detained in the prison in Jiddah. Since last year, the government has deported hundreds of thousands of illegal workers after an amnesty period. © 2014 The Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed. Learn more […]

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Fears of Syria militancy expand influence of Saudi prince

Saudi Interior Minister Mohammed bin Nayef, perhaps the most powerful younger prince in the ruling al-Saud family, is shaping Riyadh’s new emphasis on protecting the kingdom from a fresh wave of Islamist militancy inspired by the war in Syria. The United States pulled out the stops for him when he visited Washington last week to prepare for President Barack Obama’s fence-mending trip to Riyadh next month. Secretary of State John Kerry, National Security Adviser Susan Rice, Central Intelligence Agency chief John Brennan, Homeland Security Secretary Jeh Johnson, Federal Bureau of Investigation director James Comey and National Security Agency director Keith Alexander all sat down with the 54-year-old, a veteran of Saudi Arabia’s fight against al Qaeda. Prince Mohammed seems likely to be a central figure in the world’s top oil exporter for decades to come. Many Saudis say he is a strong candidate to become king […]

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Saudi Arabia Seen Needing to Boost Oil Exports as Spending Rises

Saudi Arabia, the world’s biggest crude exporter, probably needs to boost shipments this year to keep pace with record government spending , according to a former adviser to the nation’s finance ministry. The country needs to at least match the 7.54 million barrels a day it shipped last year and will probably need to sell more, John Sfakianakis, chief investment strategist at Riyadh-based MASIC, an investment company , said by phone today. He previously worked as chief economist for two Saudi Arabian banks and worked in the ministry of finance as a full-time adviser between 2011 and 2013. Extra shipments could be negative for oil prices because of expanding supplies elsewhere. Iran, Iraq and Libya , among countries with the world’s biggest reserves, will pump more crude this year, according to the most accurate forecasters surveyed by Bloomberg in December. Saudi Arabia is known as a swing producer as […]

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Saudis Agree to Provide Syrian Rebels With Mobile Antiaircraft Missiles

Washington’s Arab allies, disappointed with Syria peace talks, have agreed to provide rebels there with more sophisticated weaponry, including shoulder-fired missiles that can take down jets, according to Western and Arab diplomats and opposition figures. Saudi Arabia has offered to give the opposition for the first time Chinese man-portable air defense systems, or Manpads, and antitank guided missiles from Russia, according to an Arab diplomat and several opposition figures with knowledge of the efforts. Saudi officials couldn’t be reached to comment. The U.S. has long opposed arming rebels with antiaircraft missiles for fear they could fall into the hands of extremists who might use them against the West or commercial airlines. The Saudis have held off supplying them in the past because of U.S. opposition. A senior Obama administration official said Friday that the U.S. objection remains the same. "There hasn’t been a change internally on our view," […]

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Iraq and Iran plot oil revolution in challenge to Saudi Arabia

Iraq and Iran plot oil revolution in challenge to Saudi Arabia British oil giants BP and Royal Dutch Shell are also poised to benefit from Iraq’s ambitious production plans. Both companies are already managing two huge oil fields in southern Iraq which are vital if Baghdad is to achieve its goal. However, even if Iraq is able to achieve its target of boost production capacity it is unlikely to be able to put in place sufficient pipeline and port infrastructure to export the additional crude. Iraq’s main export terminal for loading oil tankers at Al Faw near Basra will require billions of pounds worth of improvements in addition to the refurbishment of its pipeline network. Iraq’s ambitious plan could see it clash increasingly with the regime in Saudi Arabia, which has used its influence in OPEC over the last decade to keep oil prices above $100 a barrel. Saudi […]

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Iraq Is New Schism for Saudis in Strained Alliance With West

Few goods transit the desert border between the Middle East ’s two biggest oil producers, and Saudi authorities have built a fence to help ensure that political instability in Iraq doesn’t cross over either. Dysfunctional ties between the countries have come into focus as a wave of violence sweeps Iraq, turning it into another arena where Saudi interests are diverging from those of the U.S. Fighting is centered in Anbar province, bordering Saudi Arabia , where Sunni fighters with ties to al-Qaeda are rebelling against the Shiite-led government of Nouri al-Maliki, which is supported by Iran . The Saudi view is that Maliki is “aggravating the feelings of marginalization that some Iraqi Sunnis have long complained about, and that are at the root of the current violence,” said Fahad Nazer, a political analyst at Vienna, Virginia-based intelligence analyst JTG, and a former analyst for the Saudi embassy in Washington […]

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Saudis Back Syrian Rebels Despite Risks

On his eighth trip to fight with the rebels in Syria, in August, Abu Khattab saw something that troubled him: two dead children, their blood-soaked bodies sprawled on the street of a rural village near the Mediterranean coast. He knew right away that his fellow rebels had killed them. Abu Khattab, a 43-year-old Saudi hospital administrator who was pursuing jihad on his holiday breaks, went to demand answers from his local commander, a notoriously brutal man named Abu Ayman al-Iraqi. The commander brushed him off, saying his men had killed the children “because they were not Muslims,” Abu Khattab recalled recently during an interview here. It was only then that Abu Khattab began to believe that the jihad in Syria — where he had traveled in violation of an official Saudi ban — was not fully in accord with God’s will. But by the time […]

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Saudis’ Grant to Lebanon Is Seen as Message to U.S.

If a wealthy patron were all the Lebanese Army needed to counter the Shiite militant group Hezbollah as the dominant force in the country, the recent $3 billion grant from Saudi Arabia might make a decisive difference in the country’s complex political landscape. But the Saudi aid package — nearly twice Lebanon’s $1.7 billion annual defense budget — is earmarked to buy French arms and is unlikely to give the army what it needs most, say supporters and opponents of Hezbollah here. And even if it does, they say, it will take years to make an impact. And while the Saudis are clearly alarmed at Hezbollah’s staying power and its intervention in Syria’s civil war, analysts say the gift announced last week was intended as much to send a message to the United States as to shift the military balance. Yezid Sayigh, a scholar of Arab […]

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Saudi Oil Minister Naimi Sees Crude Stable in 2014

Saudi Arabian Oil Minister Ali al-Naimi said Saturday that he is optimistic crude-oil prices will remain stable next year after the Organization of the Petroleum Exporting Countries decided earlier this month to keep its output ceiling unchanged. "The ceiling of the group was kept unchanged because the oil market is in a stable condition and oil prices are suitable for everyone," Mr. Naimi said at an energy meeting in Doha. "I’m optimistic about the future, as I see that the stability of the petroleum market will continue next year." Some officials from OPEC, a group of some of the world’s largest oil producers, have been publicly and privately jostling over whether the group should collectively cut back production in the event that global oil output rises significantly, threatening to weaken prices. Gulf OPEC officials have said that Saudi Arabia, the cartel’s kingpin, won’t unilaterally cut oil […]

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Saudis to Expand Offshore Oil Field without Kuwait

Top oil exporter Saudi Arabia will go it alone in boosting the capacity of an offshore oil field in its shared neutral zone with Kuwait after the neighboring Persian Gulf state withdrew from the project due to political deadlock between parliament and the government, two people familiar with the matter said. Kuwait had initially told Khafji Joint Operations, the joint venture that oversees and develops the operations at the neutral zone, that it would participate in the Khafji offshore project, but later pulled out due to political troubles in the country, the people said. "Kuwait has several problems between its parliament and the government that are causing delays in several projects including Khafji, which is not a top priority for the government at the moment," said one person familiar with the matter. "No official wanted to make a decision on sharing the costs of the project and get questioned […]

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