Saudi Arabia's Gigantic Oil Problem, Explained in 2 Minutes

Saudi Arabia's vast oil wealth has transformed the lives of its citizens - but it needs to turn off the rampant spending if it wants to balance the books. This Bloomberg QuickTake video explores how the kingdom plans to navigate its post-oil future.

[ReevansElectro]

I taught electrical control systems engineering technology in two colleges in Saudi Arabia to Saudis, young men only. The Saudi government has passed a law that used to require that any company in KSA (Kingdom of Saudi Arabia) hires at least 30% of their employees who are Saudis. Last year, that percentage of Saudi employees required was increased to 40%. The KSA has a population of 25 million Saudis and 6.1 million expatriates.

Up until 1961, slavery was allowed in KSA and Saudis don't actually work. They have slaves (now they have expats) who do the work. This means that the labour of 6.1 million expats contributes ALL the labour for the entire country. The companies who are required to hire Saudis either pay them to stay home because they are unskilled, or if the Saudi 'worker' is required to come into work, they are given an 'assistant' who is qualified to do their job and the Saudi sits in an elaborate office and takes credit for his expat's (slave) work.

One of my own students remarked to me during my first month there that, "We will never have to do any of this stuff" when I was trying to get them to learn and do assignments. I couldn't believe the attitude he had but since, I have found out that they all aspire to be 'managers' and that they will have their own expat to do their job. I was expected to pass them even though the students rarely attended 50% of my classes and turned in the work of others as if it was their own.

The biggest challenge for the Saudis, in my opinion, is that they believe that they are 'special' and chosen by God to not only have the Prophet Mohammad given to them, but also were given the bounty of all the oil riches.

Furthering this entitlement attitude is the way that they treat their women; in Saudi culture, women are to be treated like princesses. If you can accept that concept, by extension Saudi males must then have to be a prince to marry one of these princesses and a prince doesn't have to work, but is designed to rule over others. The Saudi mindset is to be the boss over the expat (slaves) and be rich as a result of their inherent Saudi heritage.

For the Saudi Kingdom to succeed in the world, they need to relinquish this maladaptive attitude of royal entitlements and need to see work as honourable. The Saudis also need to realize that they were put on earth like the rest of us to serve their fellow human being by their labours and efforts they make to produce goods and services we actually need. They don't even extract their own oil.

[takeover]

For the love of god, wtf is with the drums banging in this video???

[joeblow]

Hmmm. 2022 and price is 110$ go figure and I don't see Tesla's everywhere. 7$ a gallon in Cali you speak with such wisdom young lady

[wesleypollard]

They only have themselves to blame, they should have taken and reformed earlier, other countries are now less oil dependent on the middle east and are taking steps in using alternative energy.

[dingalingdingdong_]

Ahhhh, Saudi Arabia. The once glimmering nation with extreme wealth, now all being squandered away on Wahhabi fundamentalism, luxury cars, clothes, watches and of course my favorite...blondes

[oibal]

I feel so sorry for them. Poor things might have to work for a living.

[patrickcasey]

Saudi Arabia can become the world's biggest producer of glass once the oil industry is no longer profitable.

[GlitchyShadow]

Let's hope the Saudi monarchy gets karma'd

[rogerjameshamilton]

The oil boom has been a great blessing to the land of Saudi Arabia .But also my people need to acknowledge the innovation plan of the world, Automobiles and Petrol - moved devices are reducing in the number day in, day out ..It's advisable that big investors should try putting hands in also other lucrative platforms /sources of wealth such as Digital marketing i.e Crytocurrency and other futuristic source of wealth

[markplain]

If you wanna know what Saudi Arabia would be without oil, look no further than right next door - Yemen. They are the exact same people, now google the human indicators between Saudi Arabia and Yemen.

[nemo]

That's a situation that's similar (in some ways) to the view held by some people in the USA. A few people think the government can provide more and more benefits while increasing taxes on companies and rich people. But when rich people and companies move away to friendlier locations there is less and less tax revenue which will result in fewer and fewer government jobs and benefits. It's always going to be a delicate balance.

[FinancialEducation]

Saudi Arabia needs oil back above $60 if they want to balance budgets

[abdourahmanealkhalifa]

July, 2021: Oil price $75 per barrel!

[chetpomeroy]

Saudi Arabia was a participant of the Oil Embargo of 1973. As I remembered, energy prices quadrupled by 1974. If you artificially inflate the price of a given commodity, like what happened with oil in the 70's, you eventually kill demand.

[HenrySims]

That financial centre in Riyadh looks pretty good.

[arkhamkillzone]

Oil is a curse to our world. So many cleaner ways to go about our business but we are not mature and clever enough for that.

[bradknightable]

Saudi Arabia is a great example of "don't put all your eggs in one basket" being the oil industry.

[websiteanimex]

crude oil is not only saudi bussiness.. billion upon billion people do hajj and umrah to mecca. so much income.

[DavidNightingale]

Can you please do this again without the bongo drums?

[georgevonhousen]

several years ago Harvard had completed a study electrical production via wind turbines concluded that if we utilized the the available mid west land that has the available winds we could produce 16 times the amount of electricity that this was using at that time. but that would put out of business so many other highly profitable energy producers, wouldn't it???