Home pagePress CenterIn the Media Robert Ebel, a senior advisor with the CSIS Energy and National Security Program, was quoted by the Associated Press, "Analysts: Saudis Protect Own Interests in Oil Production."
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Robert Ebel, a senior advisor with the CSIS Energy and National Security Program, was quoted by the Associated Press, "Analysts: Saudis Protect Own Interests in Oil Production."
When President Bush, once a Texas oilman, asked Saudi Arabia to pump more crude, he may have forgotten that the Saudis have a long memory. And that made it a good bet his mission this past week would produce a dry hole.
In the 1990s the OPEC cartel was eager to pump more oil in a grab for cash as prices _ like today _ were going up, passing what then was viewed as a healthy sum in the $20-plus range. But then the Asia economic crisis struck and oil prices plummeted to below $10 a barrel.
Saudi Arabia and other producers got burned.
"They remember that and they're not going to have that happen again," says Robert Ebel, an international energy expert at the Center for Strategic and International Studies. "They understand the market just as well as we do."
The Center for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS) is a private, tax-exempt institution focusing on international public policy issues. Its research is nonpartisan and nonproprietary. CSIS does not take specific policy positions; accordingly, all views, positions, and conclusions expressed in these publications should be understood to be solely those of the authors.
