Saudi Arabia celebrates 75 years of oil

Conservative Saudi Arabia cut loose for one night with bright lights and loud music to celebrate 75 years of the oil era, which has turned a backward desert kingdom into a super-rich power.

King Abdullah watched dancing children and listened to actors and government executives narrating how oil transformed the desert and predicted it would do so for another 75 years.
OIL WEALTH AND POVERTY

Oil’s rise from $10 a barrel in the late 1990s to $130, partly due to soaring Chinese demand, has triggered a turnaround in the Islamic kingdom’s economic fortunes and a return to some of the big spending that characterized the 1970s and 1980s.

But it has also put Saudi rulers under greater scrutiny in a country about two-thirds of whose 17 million people are under 30 and more educated and aware of what is happening abroad.

Poverty still exists in a country where the royals, who monopolize power, include some of the richest men in the world.

Income per capita is the lowest of the six Arab Gulf nations, according to International Monetary Fund statistics, and is less than half that of the United Arab Emirates.

Ordinary Saudis are suffering from rising inflation, which hit a 30-year high in March. Like other Gulf Arab states with currencies pegged to the weakening dollar, Saudi ability to tame rising prices is limited. The higher cost of living is stoking discontent after a 2006 bourse crash wiped out the savings of many.

Reuters