Why Saudi Arabia Doesn't Care If Oil Hits $20 | Seeking Alpha

Why Saudi Arabia Doesn't Care If Oil Hits $20 | Seeking Alpha:



"

Summary

• Saudi Arabia and OPEC are aiming to undercut shale oil production by maintaining current production quotas. 

• Saudi Arabia can sustain lower oil profits because it has extremely low production costs. 

• An additional reason Saudi Arabia will not blink before multinational oil companies is because of moderate economic diversity through avenues such as religious tourism. 

• Saudi Arabia has historically used oil as a tool to advance its geostrategic interests and will continue to do so in 2015 and beyond."

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Iran says Saudi Arabia should move to curb oil price fall | Reuters

Iran says Saudi Arabia should move to curb oil price fall | 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."



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Egypt proves best destination for stock market investors - FT.com

Egypt proves best destination for stock market investors - FT.com:



"Egypt was 2014’s best destination for stock market investors, producing a total return including dividends and share price rises of more than 30 per cent in a year in which the US led equity rallies in developed economies.



In spite of the Egyptian army coup, which toppled the democratically elected government of the Muslim Brotherhood 18 months ago, the MSCI index for Egypt has almost doubled since mid-2013.



Total returns based on MSCI indices were calculated in dollar terms, so the recent collapse of the rouble aggravated the woeful state of the Russian market, where investors suffered a “negative return” — or loss — of minus 42.3 per cent."



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Azerbaijan: How Will Baku Handle the Oil Price Slide? | News | The Moscow Times

Azerbaijan: How Will Baku Handle the Oil Price Slide? | News | The Moscow Times:



""Azerbaijan is not afraid of $60 per barrel," a headline on the pro-government Azerbaijani news site Trend proclaimed recently. But with Brent crude oil, the benchmark for the oil market, now hovering around $60 a barrel, Baku might well have something to fear.



Baku's 2015 state budget was calculated based on an oil price of $90 per barrel. About 53.5 percent of the government's roughly 19.4-billion-manat ($24.8 billion) budget comes from the State Oil Fund, a government-run piggy bank that controls money generated by Azerbaijan's oil projects, and about some 20 percent from the taxes paid by oil-sector companies, according to analysts.



The government, for now, maintains that the budget can handle lower oil prices. Eventually, officials believe those prices will rise again."



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