I was looking at the Lebanon Star this morning, and in the business section I saw something that chilled me to the bone. Dubai is running out of oil. this could be the beginning of the end. OOOOOOOOOOOOO.
The title of the article is: Dubai looks to Qatar for oil as flow from Iran cut. For years everyone thought that Dubai was sitting on an ocean of oil which is why they were going on this building binge which produced the tallest building in the world and an artificial ski slope in a shopping mall.
Indeed, of the seven former Trucial States that make up the United Arab Emirates, Abu Dhabi has by far the most oil. But Dubai was reported to have all it needed to fill it's refineries and export them. They don't. Who knew? But they DID for a long while, from the 1960s to the 2000s. We don't know when the oil began to run out, and presumably the Emir and his cronies did.
Here's the major quote from the article:
Sunday’s statement from the Emirates National Oil Co. said it could seek to expand imports from the Middle East and Asia to help meet rising demand in the city-state, which has little of its own oil unlike neighboring Abu Dhabi
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the Emirates National Oil Co. is owned by the Emirs. If Abu Dhabi, which has the lion's share of the oil in the UAE needs to import oil in order to meet the country's internal needs, then we've got problems. And I mean WE, not just the Arabs and the expats who outnumber them 5 to one. The importance of the Arab world to the West and East Asia is oil. Arabia doesn't have anything else. People talk about "wars for oil" If there's no oil, then what the hell's going to happen to these people? Do they go back to pearling? Do the expats go home to their relations who don't really want them back home taking up space? We don't know.
This is going to be a massive problem for the world in the coming years. We all expected it, I just didn't think it would have started already.