Energy Kingdoms: Oil and Political Survival in the Persian Gulf (Center on Global Energy Policy) by Jim Krane
English | January 8th, 2019 | ISBN: 0231179308 | 224 pages | EPUB | 2.30 MB
After the discovery of oil in the 1930s, the Gulf monarchies—Saudi Arabia, Kuwait, Qatar, the United Arab Emirates, Oman, and Bahrain—went from being among the world's poorest and most isolated places to some of its most ostentatiously wealthy. To maintain support, the ruling sheikhs provide their subjects with boundless cheap energy, unwittingly leading to some of the highest consumption rates on earth. Today, as summertime temperatures set new records, the Gulf's rulers find themselves caught in a dilemma: can they curb their profligacy without jeopardizing the survival of some of the world's last remaining absolute monarchies?