The House Of Saud did help keep oil prices low in the 90's, because things were in balance, they were content with those profits, and also I believe there was some kind of a deal after the Gulf War where they stop gouging us for a decade or so. After all we saved their butts.
But all that changed when Bush-Cheney were nominated. Suddenly ZOOM! Up, up, up and it has hardly stopped since.
You have to imagine Bush, Cheney or James Baker, someone like that, sitting down with Prince Bandar, as well as all the big oil CEO's and saying "OK, this is our one chance to be in charge, let's take it to the limit".
Btw, there are several reasons besides greed to gouge the consumers. They wanted to get rid of environmental regulations and, in a related sense, they wanted prices high enough to justify going into pristine nature preserves and decimating those places by drilling. |
