Mid-East Oil

It Was Saudi Arabia That Broke Iran, Not the US
Maxinomics

It's always good to learn a little more about how we got where we are.

Let's Talk About Ukraine

Meeting at Diriyah Palace, Riyadh, Saudi Arabia, Tuesday Feb. 18, 2025

Looks like Zelensky, the grifter / puppet, has been sidelined. Lots of people talking about this meeting, but identification was neglected, so I decided to investigate. Note that the three countries represented at this meeting are the world's largest energy producers.

Participants, left to right:

• U.S. Middle East envoy Steve Witkoff
• U.S. Secretary of State Marco Rubio
• U.S. National Security Advisor Mike Waltz
• Saudi Foreign Minister Prince Faisal bin Farhan Al Saud,
• Saudi National Security Advisor Mosaad bin Mohammad Al-Aiban
• Russian foreign policy advisor Yuri Ushakov
• Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov

• 

  Diriyah Palace, Riyadh, Saudi Arabia

Nothing like a European palace, but then Saudi Arabia is an alien land.

Neom - The Line

Neom - The Line - The Rise and Fall of Saudi Arabia's Linear City.
Patrick Boyle

Patrick takes down Saudi Arabia's fanciful city in the desert in the most complimentary way possible. No, he isn't being sarcastic. Don't laugh, that could get you kilt.

Map of The Line - Neom

The Line is near the Straits of Tiran.

Via Iowa Man (previously known as IAman)

P. S. There is an ad somewhere in the middle for an outfit called Delete Me. It sounds like a scam to me, but they have a website which means they must be legit, right?

Royal Saudi Air Force British Aerospace Hawk 65A

Royal Saudi Air Force British Aerospace Hawk 65A

Part of the Saudi Hawks display team. Photo taken Chalons-Vatry, France, which is about 80 miles east of Paris. The Paris airshow which ended a couple of weeks ago, which could explain their presence here.

PBY Catalina 5593V

Wrecked Catalina Seaplane in Saudi Arabia

I'm watching a video about some Egyptian MiGs attacking the Israeli airbase Ofir near the southern tip of Sinai during the Yom Kipper War (October 1973). Two Israeli F-4 Phantoms shoot down 6 or 7 MiGs. Sounds about par for any Hebrew versus Musselman encounter.

Straits of Tiran

But now I'm thinking, didn't I put a post about this area once before? I did: The Straits of Tiran. Look at the map and there is an airport there and it looks very similar to the one in the video, but it's called the Sharm El Sheikh International Airport now.

The land looks pretty desolate, but there seem to be people here, so what's it look like on Streetview? Click the little yellow man and not much shows up, there's some blue lines about ten miles south along the coast, and there's some across the strait in Saudi Arabia. There doesn't look to be much of anything there, but I drag the little yellow man to the southern end of the blue line and look what jumps out at me (top).

I'm thinking this is an old WW2 wreck, but when I go looking I find no, it's not WW2, it's more recent:

PBY Catalina N5593

The Abandoned Consolidated PBY Catalina Seaplane of Saudi Arabia

During 1960, Mr. Thomas Kendall, a retired businessman, with his luxury converted Catalina PBY, registration N5593V, landed on the sandy coast of Ras Al-Sheik Hameed, with his wife and children. On the following day’s after anchoring the flying yacht, they were ambushed by bedouins of the Saudi Arabian army, who mistakenly believed it to be a military attack. The firing lasted for about 30–40mins, to which Mr. Thomas and his family were able to swim back to the aircraft, but with him being wounded, managed to move it just 800 meters. After being captured by the Bedouins, Mr. Thomas and his family were eventually taken to Jeddah, endlessly interrogated and set free, with the help of the American ambassador, Mr. Donald R. Heath.

China

April 6, 2023 - Saudi Foreign Minister Prince Faisal bin Farhan Al Saud and his Iranian counterpart, Hossein Amirabdollahian, shook hands in the Chinese capital - Aljazeera

They tell us who the Saudi and the Iranian are, but don't mention the Chinese man, so I asked Google, which led me to a similar picture from a month ago:

March 10, 2023 - Arab world hails Iran-Saudi reconciliation - The Cradle

Here we have three different guys and none of them are identified.

Straits of Tiran

Ship passing through the Straits of Tiran - Amr Abdallah Dalsh/Al Reuters

Aljazeera tells us that the UN is withdrawing their peacekeeping force from the Straits of Tiran and installing cameras to keep an eye on things, so maybe things have calmed down here. But just where are the Straits of Tiran? So off to Google Maps we go.

Gulf of Aqaba

The Straits of Tiran are at the southern end of the Gulf of Aqaba where it joins the Red Sea. It's not a vital shipping lane, unless you are Israel or Jordan who both have ports at the northern end of the Gulf. Jordan has a large oil terminal there, which might be where the ship in the first photo is coming from.

I was surprised by Jordan's presence there. I shouldn't have been, Jordan forms Israel's entire eastern border except the most northern portion, but you never hear anything about Jordan, it's like it doesn't exist.

Straits of Tiran, Tiran and Sanafir Islands

The Straits of Tiran are narrow, only about two miles wide and there are reefs in the middle. The islands look pretty desolate, but on the western (Egyptian) shore we have a bunch of resorts.

Party at Jackson Reef
Island in the background is the same one as in the first photo

I am looking at some street view images hoping to find a view of the pier that is in the first photo on this post, and this pops up. At first glance it looks like a typical drunken boat party, but if you take in the whole 360 degree view you see that the boats are almost entirely empty.

Divers at Jackson Reef

Turns out they are dive boats for tourists from the resorts and all the people are underwater. The sea life on the reefs is pretty spectacular.

Piers

I wasn't able to locate the pier on Google Maps until I realized that there were lines crossing a large green area adjacent to the shore and I realized that it was shallow water, not land, and those lines were light duty piers suitable for people to walk on, not for freight.

P.S. I thought I had looked at this part of the world once before but I couldn't remember why. Then I clicked on the place mark on the resort and all was revealed. The Super Tucanos stopped there on their round the world delivery flight.

Mecca Metro

Why the World's Biggest Metro Only Runs 7 Days a Year
Half as Interesting

OpenRailwayMap of Mecca
Red line is main freight line. Blue line is the Haj Metro

Northernmost Terminal with three tracks heading out

Other Mecca posts.

Jizan, Jazan

Houthi forces launch a ballistic missile aimed at Saudi Arabia on March 25, 2018
[Houthi Military Media Unit via Reuters]

Video Shows Saudi Red Sea Oil Terminal Ablaze After Fresh Drone Attack by Tyler Durden

The oil terminal is in Jizan (or Jazan, depending on who's spelling it). An oil terminal in Saudi Arabia, on the Red Sea, near the border with Yemen? That sounds familiar, and sure enough I put up a post about another attack a few months ago. All the videos in the ZeroHedge post are from Twitter, which don't lend themselves to clean embedding, so I went to YouTube to see if they had one. YouTube has bunch of videos of rocket attacks on Jizan. I didn't see any of the latest attack. I don't know if that matters though. The conflict has been going on for a while and will probably continue indefinitely. Another Forever War for your entertainment.

Let's Pick on Saudi Arabia

Sent to my congress persons today: There is something fundamentally wrong with our relationship with Saudi Arabia. I would prefer that we stop dealing with them completely, no oil, no money, no weapons, no diplomatic ties. Until they start behaving like civilized people and not a bunch of barbarians. Or least until they shut down all those Wahhabi schools, and all those who follow that line of teaching are dead. I realize this is not going to happen as long as we are dependent on their oil. So we need to free ourselves from this dependence. Compressed Natural Gas might be the way to go. 13 minute video showcasing the safety tests performed on vehicular CNG (Compressed Natural Gas) storage cylinders.