[marron]

there was talk within the Saudi royal family and in Arab capitals of using the "oil weapon" against the United States

Repeat after me. There is no oil weapon.

Except for the Gulf States, every OPEC member is bankrupt, including Saudi Arabia. They need to sell the oil more than we need to buy it. The most they can do is schedule maintenance forward, to simulate a cut in production, or symbolically refuse to sell directly to the US, while selling to brokers and third countries who re-sell to the US.

Keep in mind, of course, that the US only gets a small percentage of its oil from the Saudis. And keep in mind that every oil producer in the world, OPEC and non-OPEC alike, is trying mightily to increase production by any means possible (except the US). Keep in mind that the largest undeveloped oil deposits in the world are in non-OPEC countries, so that every barrel of oil not pumped by the Saudis is a barrel of market share lost to the Russians, or the Mexicans, or the Kazakhs...

[Willie Green]

Keep in mind, of course, that the US only gets a small percentage of its oil from the Saudis.

U.S. Petroleum & Crude Oil Overview
(thousand barrels per day)

	1960	1965	1970	1975	1980	1985	1990	1995	2000
U.S. Crude Oil Production	7,035	7,804	9,637	8,375	8,597	8,971	7,355	6,560	5,834
U.S. Petroleum Imports	1,815	2,468	3,419	6,056	6,909	5,067	8,018	8,835	11,093
Total	8,850	10,272	13,056	14,431	15,506	14,038	15,373	15,395	16,927
Imports as % of Total	20.5	24.0	26.2	42.0	44.6	36.1	52.2	57.4	65.5

In 2000, Saudi Arabia supplied 1,566 thousand barrels per day.
That's approximately 14.1% of our imports and 9.25% of our total consumption.

Not an insignificant amount, especially should other OPEC nation's cooperate.

This is the price we pay for Congress's absolute failure to produce a coherent energy policy over the last 30 years.

Our best opportunity to extract ourselves from this quandry is to build clean-coal and nuclear power plants to increase our electric generating capacity. Construction of electric powered mass-transportation systems in our nation's most densely populated regions and urban areas could then reduce our petroleum consumption and foreign dependence.

[Rokke]

You have nailed it. Saudi Arabia is built on a foundation of sand in more ways then one.

[hinckley buzzard]

Well said. The "gloom" in the Saudi camp is from the realization that between Russia and Mexico, their ace in the hole has been turned into a deuce, and old GW is about to call their bluff.