StorySaudi Crown Prince Sultan bin Abdulaziz has died, leaving his brother Prince Nayef the likely successor to the Custodian of the Two Holy Mosques, King Abdullah bin Abdulaziz.
Woolsey from 2007:
In Saudi Arabia, if for example Prince Nayef, the interior minister, should succeed king Abdullah someday, you’d have a Saudi king who is very close to the Wahhabi and might adopt policies that would be difficult for the United States. If you look back to February '06 when al Qaeda attacked the Abqaiq production facility in Northeastern Saudi Arabia, one has to realize that had they gotten within mortar range of that facility, they could have taken out the sulfur clearing towers. Robert McFarlane, President Reagan’s National Security advisor, tells us that would take six or seven million barrels of oil a day off line for probably over a year and quite likely send oil up to $200 per barrel.
So we don’t have control over the security either of the supply or the stability of the infrastructure they way we do over our electricity grid. Now, we have some things we need to fix about our electricity grid, some vulnerabilities, but it’s within our ability to do it. We cannot re-design the Abqaiq production facility in Saudi Arabia. So that is one major reason our dependence on foreign oil is a problem.
Also this Bloomberg story...
