You’ve seen the before-and-after pictures, like a Vegas slug of glass rising in the desert. And, you’ve read the stories about indebted foreign workers leaving their Range Rovers behind, as they flee. Perhaps you’ve seen video of the indoor ski arcade? Or, caught the gaze of the photographer’s eye on the poor, underpaid migrant workers constructing the Burj Dubai. Welcome to today’s obligatory Dubai blog post. Brought to you courtesy of some very hot, sovereign default action as the UAE’s most glittery city announced overnight a request for a stay on debt payments from Dubai World. How could a country so rich in energy resources have gotten itself into such a mess?
It’s generally assumed that just about every Mid-East oil producer is a big, net exporter of oil and while that’s also true for the United Arab Emirates what’s worth noting, or retelling today, is the means by which the UAE, principally because of Dubai (an Emirate within the UAE), started to become a net importer of natural gas.
As in the rest of the world, though primarily in Asia, the Mid-East is now finally in the process of transitioning away from using industrial diesel for its power generation–though in many cases starting from very high levels. You can understand why that practice lingered in places like Saudi Arabia for so long, when the cost of oil extraction was effectively near zero.
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