After the historian OPEC agreement, analysts project i crude oil prices very close to $60 already in the first quarter of 2017, but then the interests of the US shale oil industry intertwine with the conservative aims of the Saudis on one side and the Russians on the other, and the situation becomes more complicated. I think it is quite clear by now that if no Gulf country is open to welcoming Syrian migrants, who represent an enormous social cost, let alone be interested in a stable peace in the Middle East and therefore risk a stable Western presence in the area where once again the “Oil Games” dominate the old and new conflicts.
The numbers are sadly known: 5 years of war in Syria, 400 dead and 11 million refugees scattered across Turkey, Jordan, Iraq, Lebanon and Europe. Not a single Gulf country, where the control of the territory by the ruling monarchies is very tight, seems determined to allow anyone to cross the borders, putting at risk decades of measured social policies both in the redistribution of wealth but above all in accessing information, the media and the internet.
If the Arab springs were the fuse and offered the right to an "organized" invasion of jihadists in Syria, aimed at definitively undermining the uncomfortable power of the Alawite minority, in command since 1966, in these countries control was iron, as well as costly in some cases such as cleaning up the unrest in Bahrain. But precisely the 70s are an era in which, almost simultaneously with the Alawite rise, Saudi Wahhabism he left the national borders of his country of origin and came used by the US to feed the birth of rebel troops in Afghanistan. and then it spread rapidly in theCentral Asia with various geopolitical and destabilizing implications of the ethnic-religious balance of many countries until then peaceful such as Georgia, Crimea, Uzbekistan, Azerbaijan…
A tsunami that had as its purpose, in addition to implement a return of religious fundamentalism, also of punish the republican and progressive instances of the closest countries such as Algeria, Libya, Egypt and Syria. The US therefore played with fire for years, convinced that it was even capable of exploit certain derivatives such as Al Qaeda or the Muslim Brotherhood. But without retracing a history that has not always been thoroughly investigated, against the background of the ideologies that have seen the Sunni world opposed to the Muslim Shiite world, there were the two opposing blocks, the USA and Russia, facing each other, from the Suez War of 1956 until today, on the devastated ground of the Syrian rubble.
Bashar Al Assad has not bowed to the intricate dynamics of oil and gas risk and so the country was invaded by well-armed and organized rebels and now Russia, Turkey, and Iran on one side are facing the western Brancaleone Army on the other are challenging the Gulf countries led by an economically weak Saudi Arabia which for the first time Once in its history it resorts to a slide presentation to show the world official numbers that amaze and do not completely convince even the most trained analysts. But it seems more like an attempt to reassure the market after the exceptional success of the recent bond issues that others will follow and that the issuer is solid. In fact the concomitant announcement that next year they will issue at least between 10 and 15 billion dollars on international markets after the exceptional sale of the most impressive emerging bond in some time launched in October for 17,5 billion dollars multitranche at 5,10 and 30 years is the confirmation.
The severe reform plan called Vision 2030 then demonstrates that the crisis has hit the Gulf countries hard, which necessarily have to resort to conventional finance to repay and give relief to public budgets that show large deficits and the reduced finances of the reigning houses. There is talk of a financing requirement according to Standard & Poor's reports of almost 600 billion US dollars between now and 2020.
Trump knows this situation better than Obama, especially on the side of trade and the interests that have always characterized them among the players in the area and will try to exploit it in its favor, clearly preferring to facilitate the needs of the Gulf countries rather than being compliant with Iran, and leaving it to Putin with the Troika of the Moscow Declaration to play the military truce card alongside Turkey and Iran.
But above all now the concern is of a deployment of IS pieces fleeing Iraq and Syria to Libya, always hunting for oil resources hand in hand with the al Nusra rebels. And so Trump's foreign policy comes into play once again alongside the only non-Islamic country in the Middle East, Israel, which has always been considered a western avant-garde. And it is also for this reason that the Saudis and the GCC countries do not want a stable Israeli-Palestinian peace: for not having the well-displaced Westerners at the center of their oil risk.
So that Obama has done everything to weaken the historic US-Israel alliance, evaluating in his lack of lucidity that by sacrificing Israel, the US could have fully accredited itself with those countries that have been the real and only rulers of the area for 50 years. However, he stumbled in the mania for grandeur and the desire for politically expendable results which either led to expansion also in Iran and so the House of Cards collapsed miserably amid jeers from the ayatollahs and failed promises ever since the first historic announcement of a supposed agreement on the nuclear.
2017 will be a year in which energy resources will be at the center of investors' attention, because they will act as a watershed not only for a flow of new investments in the energy sector, which in many cases still appears undervalued, but will also see the Venezuelan drama alternate with hopes and will strengthen Russian certainties of leading a resurgence. Politics and oil they will remain the undisputed rulers of a large part of the financial fortunes of 2017, erasing the memory of two years characterized by oil at balance prices.
