How does the Gulf manage the next phase of its love affair with oil? | Arab News

How does the Gulf manage the next phase of its love affair with oil? | Arab News:

By a simple fact of geology, the future of the countries of the Arabian Gulf is inextricably linked with the energy business, and in particular with the oil industry. This is the central tenet of the newly published book “Energy Kingdoms” by Jim Krane, former Gulf-based journalist-turned-academic at the Baker Institute for Energy Studies at Rice University in Houston, Texas.

Oil has been responsible for the explosive increase in the Gulf states’ living standards, and for the booming economic development they have experienced since the 1970s, when they managed to persuade the world to pay a reasonable price for the “black gold” that the West had been getting on the cheap until then. Two examples in particular illustrate the importance of oil as an economic determinant. Dubai, ironically because it did not have much oil to begin with, used oil revenue as seed capital to develop its potential as a hub for transport, trade and tourism. The emirate also offered a haven for oil executives working in less comfortable environments in the region.

Saudi Arabia, on the other hand, is the full-on oil economy, blessed with quantities beyond the dreams of oil explorers in the 1930s. Oil has be