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The Kingdom of Saudi Arabia, located in southwest Asia, occupies about 80% of the Arabian peninsula. Saudi Arabia is bordered by on the north by Jordan, Iraq, and Kuwait, on the east by the Persian Gulf and Qatar, on the southeast by the United Arab Emirates and Oman, on the south by Yemen, and on the west by the Red Sea and the Gulf of Aqaba. The capital of Saudi Arabia is Riyadh. Some of the borders are unspecified, so estimates of the area of Saudi Arabia range from 1,960,582 to 2,240,000 square kilometers (about 864,900 square miles). The estimated population of Saudi Arabia in July, 2004 was 25,795,938. The official language of Saudi Arabia is Arabic. In 1902, ABD AL-AZIZ bin Abd al-Rahman Al Saud captured Riyadh and set out on a 30-year campaign to unify the Arabian Peninsula. Today, the monarchy is ruled by a son of ABD AL-AZIZ, and the country's Basic Law stipulates that the throne shall remain in the hands of the aging sons and grandsons of the kingdom's founder. Following Iraq's invasion of Kuwait in 1990, Saudi Arabia accepted the Kuwaiti royal family and 400,000 refugees while allowing Western and Arab troops to deploy on its soil for the liberation of Kuwait the following year. The continuing presence of foreign troops on Saudi soil after Operation Desert Storm remained a source of tension between the royal family and the public until the US military's near-complete withdrawal to neighboring Qatar in 2003. The first major terrorist attacks in Saudi Arabia in several years, which occurred in May and November 2003, prompted renewed efforts on the part of the Saudi government to counter domestic terrorism and extremism, which also coincided with a slight upsurge in media freedom and announcement of government plans to phase in partial political representation. A burgeoning population, aquifer depletion, and an economy largely dependent on petroleum output and prices are all ongoing governmental concerns. -- The CIA World Factbook: Saudi Arabia
Saudi Arabia Weather: Current Conditions
Saudi Arabia Reference Articles and Links
Meteorology & Environment (weather forecast) Arabia.com ArabNews.com Riyadh Daily Saudia Online (business news) Saudi Arabian Information Resource, the Saudi Government's Ministry of Information website, is searchable: Travelocity Free Real-Time Airline Flight Tracking |
Saudi Arabia NewsFeedDirect NewsFeedsTry NEWS SEARCH ENGINES OPEC: Org. of Petroleum Exporting Countries June 24, 1952: Memorandum for the [US] Attorney General Relative to a Request for Grand Jury Authorization to Investigate the International Oil Cartel |
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TIME Magazine, January 15, 1951, p. 69: BUSINESS & FINANCE: FOREIGN TRADE: Half & Half In the garden of his modern home two miles outside Jedda, Saudi Arabia'a shrewd old (60) Finance Minister Abdullah El Suleiman sat down to wait for a visitor. For greater comfort in the muggy 80° heat, he slipped off his sandals. When a U.S. car rolled up, barefooted Abdullah arose, greeted Arabian American Oil Co.'s Executive Vice President Fred A. Davies and ushered him inside. There, over small earthenware cups of tea and thick coffee, they scratched their signatures to a historic document. When the news of its contents came out last week, it delighted other oil-rich Middle Eastern nations, but it dismayed Great Britain. Davies,* in revising Aramco's 17-year-old agreement with Saudi Arabia's King Ibn Saud, had given him the most generous deal ever made in all the turbulent history of Middle Eastern oil. In effect, Aramco made old Ibn Saud an equal partner, who would share & share alike in all of Aramco's profits, including 1950's whopping net (before royalties) of $180 million. For Ibn Saud and Saudi Arabia, it meant a kingly take of $90 million, 50% more than the $60 million that would have been paid under the old royalty payments of 34¢ a barrel. If, as expected, Aramco rings up an operating profit of $200 million in 1951, Ibn Saud will get half of that. What dismayed the British was that they had been closely bargaining for months with the Iranian government to accept much lower royalties from the Anglo-Iranian Oil Co. (TIME, Jan. 8). The British government, which controls Anglo-Iranian, feared that the Iranians, who now get considerably less than half of Anglo-Iranian's profits, would never settle for less than a 50-50 split. In addition, Anglo-Iranian and the five other owners of the Iraq Petroleum Co. had just about completed long negotiations with Iraq on a new contract. Now that deal, too, seemed certain to blow sky-high. "Take a Law." Actually, Aramco had had little choice in its deal. Ibn Saud, faced with heavy drains on his exchequer to keep up his luxurious standard of living and pay for public works, had been demanding more money for two years. Abdullah Suleiman had imported a U.S. tax expert, John Greaney, to help him get it. In November Ibn Saud, who passes his own laws, suddenly promulgated an income-tax decree which would take half of Aramco's profits now and possibly a bigger slice later. For two months Aramco's Davies and his lawyers argued with Abdullah, protesting that the decree violated their 1933 agreement. Unimpressed, Abdullah said that even rich nations like the U.S. find that they have to boost their taxes now & then. Furthermore, he said, Standard Oil Co. (N.J.), one of Aramco's owners, had made a 50-50 split five years ago with Venezuela. Davies then offered the flat 50-50 in return for two important concessions: Abdullah promised in the written contract that the arrangement would be his top demand; he also agreed that Aramco, instead of paying entirely in U.S. dollars and sterling as before, could pay Saudi Arabia in the currencies it takes in from sales. With this assurance, Davies believed that Aramco could do more business in Italy, France, and other soft-currency markets (95% of Aramco's market is outside the U.S.). Take a Lesson. Aramco was reasonably happy with the deal. After investing $400 million in Saudi Arabia, it had boosted production 46-fold in a decade, to a rate of 650,000 barrels daily (equal to 11% of all U.S. domestic production). With the prospect of an expanding market, and with its development work largely completed, Aramco recognized that Saudi Arabia was entitled to a bigger share than it had gotten during the years of exploration work. Moreover, Aramco preferred to make a generous deal now--and win the prospect of a long period of good feeling--rather than to haggle and build up resentment. It had not forgotten that accumulated resentment caused Mexico to expropriate U.S. oil companies in 1938. It also knew that Jersey Standard's generous 1945 settlement with Venezuela had built immense good will. Ibn Saud also was shrewd enough to learn his own lesson from the Mexican affair: Mexico's oil production plummeted after it drove the U.S. companies out. And Ibn Saud, with no one else to turn to but Britain, which he dislikes, and Russia, which he fears, wanted to keep Aramco happy, too. * No kin to American Independent Oil Co.'s President Ralph Davies, now drilling for oil in adjoining Kuwait. |
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