Try again. The Dumping has a definition, of which the key in the trade analysis is the putting to market below the cost of the production or putting the product to the global market below that
The Saudis are not doing either of those things.
So no again the word Tamper has no proper use for the decision of the Saudis in their own company about their own resource to say they “tamper”“Saudi Arabia may then start to tamper with production again to try to get the price back to where it wants it (around $100 barrel.)”
Tantrum?
More it is likely you are butthurt over how it is pointed out the word tamper was used without any rational or logical foundation,
You’re wrong in this rather dumb assumption. I despise the Saudis and one can never find here a kind word from me about them.
However, I am not an ideologue nor am I a political.
There is not “an alternative” perspective - there is no rational logic - not in the trade law, not in the economics, except only for empty abuse, to use the word tamper for the idea of decisions about the own production. It is a usage merely from dislike.
That is you have actually not a single basis for the use of the word tamper except as some empty and non-factual abusive usage, because voila, Saudis and we hate them… since there is not any fact set that makes the word logical to use about Saudi own decisions for own production (or we must say that the Apple ‘tampers’ with the production and the market access about its products… but of course you would not write that, they are not Saudis).
It does highlight how the westerners get their panties all twisted up and say illogical emotional things about the Saudis out of the pure dislike.
KSA will try to influence global market prices, as much as they can, to their own ends. Martin purely points out something that many industry speculators have already mentioned - the barrel price collapsed at just the point that VC investors in US unconventionals such as shale were expecting to see big rewards, and the party that can benefit most from that long term is KSA. Hell, it’s even possible they could end up buying into many of the shale companies as their share price tanks, giving them a win-win situation going forward.
Alnaimi was pretty clear that he was going after the Unconventional back in 2013, and all through 2014 he made similar statements.
Now there’s nothing wrong with strategic production decisions such as that. That’s business, and believe me when I say every operator and service company that has the resources is taking every advantage they can of this slump, buying out smaller companies or competitors. This is just the very largest scale of what business does.
But I don’t see why it’s wrong to say that trying to influence the market to your own ends is tampering, and I don’t think you need to claim it’s western prejudice.
Okay then I expect that when the Western company seeks its market share by price cutting and flooding market it is called “tampering”
I saw the dictionary definition of the word and I have not ever seen in the FT or in Les Echoes once such things called “tampering”
Manipulating, very good, tampering is another word and it is quite indicative of the strangley distorted discourse over the oil and the Saudis (who again I despise and have not one bit of liking for).
Saudi Arabia has no obvious means to make the Iranian government fall. For starters, Iran does not have a significant Sunni population which the Saudis can hope to use for its own ends, so a proxy war within Iran itself is out. Outright invasion is right out as well, and everybody knows it, the Saudis most of all. All Saudi Arabia can hope to do - indeed, what it clearly hopes to do - is to curtail Iranian influence in the region, sabotaging its rise towards regional dominance.
Saudi Arabia does, of course, have a significant Shi’ite population. But I imagine that were the Saudi Shi’ites to rise in open rebellion (with or without Iranian support), the House Of Saud would nevertheless manage to put 'em down, as Saddam did with his own restive Shi’ites after Gulf War I. They’re consummate survivors, those Sauds, and in putting down a Shi’ite rebellion they’d enjoy widespread support from practically every segment of their society (even the anti-Saud Salafists).
Oh and if Tehran did somehow fall, the next Iranian government would likely be strikingly similar to the present one. Less theological posturing, perhaps, were the next gov’t to call itself “secular,” but much of the same underlying geopolitical ambition. As for what will some day replace the House Of Saud, well, who’s to say - but surely there’s a non-zero chance it’ll be something even worse.
Also see Syria, where Obama still wants to overthrow the Assad regeim, despite knowing full well that motherfucking ISIS would replace him. Sorry Mr. President, but your forgeign policy has crossed the line from “poorly thought out” to “actively making the world a worse place.”
I think you’re assuming something that is patently false–that Westerners are going to give two shits what you say about our oil majors. Western oil majors like ExxonMobil, Shell, BP and Chevron are often among the least popular companies in terms of public perception out there. ExxonMobil in particular is regularly on a short list of most reviled companies. No one is going to care if you claim they’re tampering with something if they are in fact tampering with something.
Shiites are only around 10-15% of the Saudi population, so it’s not even that analogous to Saddam and Iraq, where the Shiites were a majority of the population. Shiites in Saudi Arabia have no realistic means of seizing control of the country
And about 9% of the population in Iran is Sunni, so the two countries are actually quite similar in that respect. Of course Iran allows other religions to exist so you have tiny communities of Christians and even Jews in Iran, whereas that would be unthinkable in Saudi Arabia (for citizens).
I think this is missing the point. Maybe I am wrong, but I think Ramira was annoyed for a westerner to talk of internal Saudi decisions about Saudi property as if they were talking about US (or western) property. You don’t “tamper” with your own stuff. You “tamper” with someone else’s stuff. There’s often a sense that “we (in the US or the west) have ownership/authority/rights to” mideast oil that is resented by the people who live there. And I think that’s what set Ramira off. Not the idea that someone might be criticizing the Saudis.
(I said pretty nasty things about the Saudis, and she didn’t respond at all, fwiw.)
Shia-Sunni card can be overthought (and played). Iraqi Shias did not support Iran at all during the Iran-Iraq War for instance.
The Saudis have other fissures that the Iranians could exploit,the less then popular domination of Najadis in Hejaz and Asir. Several Iranian peoples don’t much like Farsi domination; such as Azeri’s and Baloch, which the Saudi’s would encoarage.
Okay, but again–I’ve already said Ramira was reading a lot into my original use of the word tamper that just isn’t there. We don’t live in bubbles, countries are interconnected and their activities affect each other. It’s not saying Saudi Arabia doesn’t own its own mineral resources if you also allege they are deliberately tampering with the price of oil. FWIW the U.S. was doing the same thing when Obama released some of the SPR during the Arab Spring. Oil is a fungible commodity, acting like you can’t tamper with its price when you’re the lowest cost producer in the world is frankly strange to me.
Unless there is some new meaning of the word tamper in the english language you have baldly misused it abusively. Manipulate yes, tamper no.
You can take away Exxon and replace with a non oil subject.
One can not “tamper” with the freely traded price of the commodity by public action. Maybe you can “manipulate” but no ordinary meaning of tamper meets this. The Saudis make completely market based intervention, they produce more. There is no colusions with others (in fact the others are angy), they do as any low cost producer can do if it wants to achieve a market share…
you do not like the Saudi market actions and you do no like the Saudis, well understood but not one of the objections has had anything but a political emotional basis - an empty incorrect usage of the word
Sure, but she was pretty much wrong. The “tampering” that was being talked about was manipulating an otherwise free market by essentially dumping oil in order to wreck the US unconventional petroleum industry, and then messing with their own production levels in order to re-manipulate it back above $100/bbl.
Seems to me that sort of market manipulation by the single largest player could easily be construed by many in that market as tampering with the otherwise rational and orderly functioning of that market.
Dumping is to sell a product below the cost of the production or the domestic price of the product. The Saudis are not selling below their cost of production and not below the price domestically.
Very simply by ratoinal economic analysis - versus the emotional reaction and only empty political abusive words - there is not any dumping and it is not a ratoinal use of the word tamper, as in “Saudi Arabia may then start to tamper with production again” when it is their own production of their own commodity.
To manipulate the market, yes this could be said, but they make clear, transparent production sold on a market basis into a free and liquid market… this is not “tampering” by any logical use of the word outside of mere empty abuse.
Take this to any less emtional and political commodity subject and it would be laughed at to use the word tamper. (or dumping which means in your usage only “some actoin that americans are butt hurt about”)
I think at the moment they are below production cost. From what I’ve read their production cost is about $40 and currently a barrel is going for $36-37.
Eh, Ramira is obviously sensitive to the topic, but Martin Hyde used “tamper” to talk about Saudi Arabia’s own production, where I would certainly have used some other word.
As I wrote above, what meaning of the word Tamper fits the management of a company for its own purposes changing the production of its own product? When ever does one use this "t
This is relevant indeed to the basic analysis of the Saudi actions overall as it is more than clear that the dislike of the Saudis (I repeat I have no love at all for them, they have done such great damage culturally it is hard to exagerate) makes people write irrational, illogical and just emptily abuse and gets in the way of any understanding rationally of their actions.
Dragging in incorrect ‘free market’ (except as the usa political term, not in economcis sense) or WTO assertions highlights.
Weird responses by some people. Tampering basically started by OPEC in 1973 with the embargo and quotas. Saudi Arabia decides to no longer participate in this tampering. And some people here refer to this change as tampering???