- Oil prices are expected to surge - if only temporarily
- when already jittery markets reopen globally on Monday after the weekend
attack on oil industry personnel in Khobar, eastern Saudi Arabia.
-
- Although Saudi Arabian oil supplies were not interrupted
and Khobar, the Persian Gulf coast town, has no production, export or refining
facilities, analysts said on Sunday that fears about the stability of the
Saudi regime, the world's most important oil exporter, and further al-Qaeda-linked
attacks will be deepened by the raid.
-
- So concerned are markets about supply shortages that
the recent Saudi pledge to raise production levels ahead of Thursday's
meeting of Organisation of Petroleum Exporting Countries has done little
to push prices below the recent $40 per barrel level.
-
- "Now terrorist attacks are targeting one of the
core points of the global oil system," said Antonio Merino, chief
economist of Repsol YPF, the Spanish oil company. "This is especially
relevant at a time when it is generally accepted that more Saudi oil is
needed."
-
- The effects of the attacks on global markets may be softened
by holidays today in both the world's most important trading centres, New
York and London. The much smaller Singapore oil market will be the first
test today.
-
- Following a similar terrorist attack in Saudi Arabia
this month, crude futures soared nearly $2 per barrel in the first 48 hours
of trading.
-
- Despite fears of a growing campaign by Islamic extremists,
however, oil installations in Saudi Arabia remain much more tightly secured
than the offices and homes that were hit at the weekend.
-
- Pipelines are buried deep beneath the desert and computerised
control rooms in concrete bunkers direct theflow of crude at the kingdom's
most important processing plants north of Dharhan.
-
- Of more concern is the potential exodus of western experts,
largely US and British, whom the Saudis rely on for expertise. Recent attacks
have not seen a large outflow of expatriates, despite calls by the US state
department for Americans to leave.
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