It is a very dangerous game to try and predict what will happen next in the Middle East and North Africa at the moment, so I report this with all the usual caveats. But John Roberts, an energy security specialist at Platts, has been watching the region for a long time, and he thinks that the possible removal of Muammar Gaddafi blows apart a lot of long-held assumptions about the region.
The key assumption as far as Libya was concerned was that with high oil revenues and a small population, Gaddafi was safe. If trouble started, he could always bribe people into remaining quiet – as he appears to have done recently, reportedly increasing wages and loans on offer to Libyans.
But it seems now that people want more than just financial security and the stability that comes with high oil revenues: they want freedom. And if they want that in Libya, which has a GDP-per-capita of around $12,000, why shouldn’t they want the same in Saudi Arabia, whose income per head is only slightly higher at $14,000 a year?
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