Opec member states determined to ‘fight themselves’

‘War against IS should not be traditional’

“THE failure of the Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries (OPEC) in terms of reaching an agreement over the adoption of a resolution to tackle the steady deterioration of oil prices in the international market means the member states have determined to ‘fight themselves’, simply because the reduction of oil price to less than $40 per barrel could lead to catastrophic outcomes for these states since most of them depend on petrodollars for supporting their budgets while some of them depend solely on oil revenues,” columnist, former Secretary General of Kuwait Democratic Forum (KDF), former MP and economic and oil expert Abdullah Al-Naibari wrote for Aljarida daily.

“During the previous crises caused by the oil price decline, the OPEC member states used the sole weapon for protecting their interests – by controlling oil prices in the international market. This happened in the 1980s while in 1998, the oil producing countries decided to cut down their oil output. These countries took the same action in 2008 and 2009 when the oil price went down to $35 per barrel.

“In their recent meeting, the OPEC member states seemed to have failed to reach an agreement on reducing their oil production and eventually they have to take back the oil surplus from the international market. Not only that, these states have failed to reach an agreement on OPEC’s output ceiling and the quota of each member. They ignored the fact that such failure shall result in tight competition in terms of enhancing oil production, particularly since we know that Iran and Iraq are currently striving to enhance their oil output for the latter to reach the level which was prevalent prior to the crisis and forced Tehran and Baghdad to cut their oil output.

“In this context, one may infer that the Iranian oil production prior to the crisis ranged from four to five million barrels per day. For its part, Iraq is trying to enhance its output to reach the same level.

“Meanwhile, one may say that the OPEC member states’ failure to reduce their oil output ceiling to 30 million barrels per day means the international oil market shall witness oil surplus so the price will decline further, considering the current price is less than that in the 1980s.

“On the other hand, the insistence of some OPEC members to maintain their quotas in the international oil market proved to be a failure, especially since we know that such an insistence failed to surmount the oil surplus issue in the international market, most of which came from the rock (petrosal) oil offer in the international market estimated at five million barrels per day in 2014 .

“In this context, one may observe that the United States of America, for instance, managed to augment its rock oil output to about 15 million barrels per day and this has prompted Washington to reduce its crude oil imports. In other words, the bet of the United States of America and Canada on reducing the production of this type of oil in view of its high cost was a failure, taking into consideration that the rock oil output was reduced to only 300,000 barrels per day. This is in addition to the fact that

Al-Naibari

the concerned countries are expected to go ahead in producing the same even if the price of ordinary oil reaches $30 per barrel.

“Now, the question is: What about the impact of the oil price decline on the annual budgets of OPEC member states? In this connection, we would like to elucidate that OPEC’s oil output is about one third of the world production. Therefore, the petrodollars represent the basic source of annual budgets for member states.

“One may point out that in 2012 the oil output of OPEC reached 25 million barrels per day with a total value of $1.615 billion per day, while the output of member states from petrodollars was estimated at $1.581 billion in 2013.

“However, 18 months after the oil price decline started, the output of member states went down by 50 to 60 percent per day. Consequently, these states shall face a remarkable budget deficit in case their oil output remain in the level of 25 million barrels per day. Based on the oil price decline recorded last month – less than $60, one may conclude that the losses of OPEC member states will be around $1.5 billion per day or $450 billion per month.

“Given the above, the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia will be the major loser since it is the biggest oil producing country, followed by Kuwait and the United Arab Emirates (UAE). One may say that the oil revenue of the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia in 2012 amounted to $336 billion and $321 billion in 2013. This means the Kingdom’s revenue from oil export will be less than $170 billion by the end of this year with a deficit estimated at $ 170 billion.

“For Kuwait, Al-Shall estimated the budget deficit at $5 billion if the price of oil is $51 per barrel. This deficit will increase if the oil price decline continues –ranging from $30 to $40.”

Also:

“Certainly, those who manage the Islamic State (IS) or DAESH are the ones specifying the moves of this organization so they are responsible for its crimes. They have realized that the confrontation between the organization and its foes is inevitable, simply because the world will not accept the existence of this type of state,” columnist Ahmed Al-Sarraf wrote for Al-Qabas daily.

“The combatants of this organization have nothing to lose as it is presumed that they shall fight to death. Nevertheless, it is also presumed that the war against these combatants should not be traditional, rather it will be different from any other war because this organization has expanded its influence over the areas it currently controls in Syria and Iraq. Under such circumstances, it is impossible to force the organization to abandon those areas through airstrikes. This necessitates an extensive ground and marine confrontation supported by airstrikes

“One may infer that defeating DAESH is not under the jurisdiction of the West, especially since we had earlier accused the latter of being behind the group. It is rather the responsibility of Islamic countries in general, and Gulf countries in particular, so these countries should shoulder their responsibility towards the formation of a big, welltrained and equipped ground army for fighting against DAESH and to root out the group permanently.

“We say the above, although we realized that the war against DAESH shall result in massive destruction and devastation, but it goes without saying that ignoring the group will pose more danger to Islamic countries and the humanity in general.

“However, what has been said about the lack of seriousness on the part of the United States of America in combating DAESH seems unfair, because Washington had announced that defeating the group is not an easy task and it will take many years.

“Thus, one may say that in spite of the airstrikes waged by the West and Russia on DAESH, in addition to the ground war waged by Hezbollah of Lebanon and Iran as well as the Lebanese and Syrian regular forces, the organization maintains its momentum despite losing many of its leaders.”

“The Kingdom of Saudi Arabia recently announced the formation of the Islamic military alliance consisting of 34 Islamic countries. This alliance aims to fight against the ISIL and other terrorist organizations. Although we hope for the best from it, we still do not know what awaits the alliance,” columnist Dr Hassan Abdallah Abbas wrote for Al-Rai daily.

“The problem with this alliance is that there is no single or universal definition of terrorism. For instance, if you ask the participating countries what do they regard as terrorism, Sudan will point at the rebel forces in the South, most of whom are Christians. If you ask Somalia or Nigeria, their answer will be Al-Shabaab and Boko Haram, whereas in Bahrain, it will be Hezbollah; in Egypt, the Muslim Brotherhood; in Saudi Arabia, al-Qaeda and in Turkey, the Kurds.

“If the major countries wanted to find a universal definition of terrorism, they would have done it easily, but as usual, these major forces benefit from various types of organizations which could be considered terrorist organizations in terms of serving their interests.

“Therefore, when the alliance of 34 countries for fighting terrorism under the leadership of the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia, meets; I only see it fighting against the ISIL. It is unnecessary to fuss over this matter, because we know the source of terrorism as it lives amongst us. To win over terrorism, we need to uproot its ideology from the sources.”

“Mustafa Kemal Ataturk abolished the caliphate rule of the Islamic Ottoman Empire and founded Turkey as a modern secular state. By doing so, he let go of the dominance of Turkey on Arab and Islamic nations, which ended up in the hands of European colonialists,” columnist Mustafa Al-Sarraf wrote for Al-Qabas daily.

“After the fall of the Ottoman Empire, the Europeans found their way to form a Jewish state in Palestine and then gave Turkey the membership of North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) due to its strategic location, bordering both Russia and the Arab world, and securing the back of Israel.

“Turkey has been working hard to be included in the European Union, but so far, the EU continues to turn it down. Despite Turkey’s history in handling Islamic affairs, it is difficult to imagine the Justice and Development Islamic Party being sincere when it turns to Arab nations in order to adopt some of its affairs, such as the Palestinian case.

“The issue with these Islamic parties is that they raise Islamic slogans but their practices go against the principles and doctrine of Islam. Unfortunately, these socalled Islamic parties are always on the frontline to fight against pan-Arabism, just like what the Zionists are doing. Therefore, I think the objective behind the Justice and Development Islamic Party working with NATO is to execute several scenarios in the region, one of which is to divide Iraq.”

“When there is a strong and certain decision for the good of the country, it must be respected by all of us. In other words, all of us should respect this kind of decision,” Talal Al-Saeed wrote for Al-Seyassah daily.

“We suffered in the past due to the absence of such a decision or weakness of a decision which made Kuwait tarry in implementing many of its development projects. In addition, people keep on talking about various issues at the expense of the country’s development.

“Unfortunately, when we go a step forward in executing any development project, we go back a hundred steps; whereas our neighboring and sisterly countries move forward in completing projects which are impeded here.

“People support and surround whoever makes a tough decision, especially when they feel that his decision is right and for the public good even if it is at the expense of their comfort.”

“Does Kuwait need positive or negative shock before getting out of the bottleneck as regards to human resource development and encouraging its people to be productive?” Fahad Daoud Al-Sabah wrote for Al-Nahar daily.

“Does the country need to remain as it is with high percentage of waste that threatens the economic system and project funding activities? Intervention in terms of the budget deficit cannot even be resolved by high prices of oil or diversification of resources whose search seems to be happening at inappropriate places.

“Those questions are not taken into consideration when finding the right solutions to the financial crises faced by the country. This is because we are still using the old methods in solving our problems. The conventional methods include raise in fees for services, impose high taxes, suspending some projects or embarking on only unproductive service projects. We have never considered the need to explore our potentials in order to improve production activities.

“Discriminative utterances against Muslims by the US presidential candidate Donald Trump are not the first of such coming from the US society and politicians in particular, Dr Ahmad Bin Fahad wrote for Al-Sabah daily.

“It is sad the Arab mentality toward anything America remains the same, as America has taken over all their activities, particularly politics, despite it smears the image of Muslims and incites societies against them for purely political reasons!

“Trump will not be the last to make uncouth statements against Muslims. Others in his category will make similar, less or more severe utterances at every point depending on the objectives. It is difficult to believe that he is acting alone, without support from any political faction that adopts his ideology, if we imagine that Trump does not represent an appreciable segment of America”.

— Compiled by Zaki Taleb