Slick motive: Saudi attacks target oil kingdom disarray

[seemslikeadream]

By Thomas Caywood
Monday, June 14, 2004

Attacks against American energy workers in Saudi Arabia appear as much aimed at crippling the kingdom's oil industry and fraying its relationship with the United States as at spilling American blood, a senior administration official and a security expert said.

The Saudi oil machine would sputter without foreign experts to help run it, he said, and many of those people aren't likely to stick around if they feel vulnerable to capture or assassination. More than 8 million foreigners work in Saudi Arabia, most of them in the oil industry.

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http://news.bostonherald.com/international/view.bg?articleid=31807

[daleo]

1. I would go even farther

I would say that attacking American oil workers is primarily aimed at crippling the oil industry and fraying the relationship with the U.S.

Eight million foreigners working in Saudi Arabia is pretty amazing though. It seems doubtful that most could be in the oil business, even peripherally. The entire population of Alberta (Canada) is only about 3 million, and we produce a fair bit of oil ourselves, without most people even being in the oil patch.