Iyad el-Baghdadi is president of the Kawaakibi Foundation, a nonprofit organization focused on the future of liberty in the Muslim world.

It’s been two years since Saudi Arabia’s Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman announced a national transformation project to structurally overhaul the Saudi state. His “Vision 2030” reform program aims to change the kingdom into a “normal country,” with a post-oil economy and a post-Wahhabi Islam.

Economic reform is the driver behind Vision 2030 – the International Monetary Fund has warned that Saudi Arabia will run out of cash without serious structural reform – but other reforms are no less important. Increasing labor participation by women, for example, requires lifting such restrictions as the driving ban (which is set to end on June 24).

Perhaps the most head-turning change is the transition away from Wahhabism, the arch-conservative version of Islam that had long been allied with the Saudi state. The government has recently stopped all funding to Wahhabi institutions outside Saudi Arabia and severely curtailed the powers of the religious police. Curbing the Wahhabis is great news for everyone. They are extremist, regressive, sectarian, and had received Saudi state support to spread their ideology across the globe, often to destructive effect.

The rest of the international community has a direct stake in the success of Saudi Arabia’s reform effort. Should Vision 2030 fail, we’ll be facing an explosion of instability at the very heart of the Arab and Muslim world. Unfortunately, the 32-year-old in charge of Vision 2030 – Mohammed bin Salman himself – has become a threat to his own project.

Vision 2030 represents, at its core, a new Saudi social contract. But the way the crown prince is rewriting this contract should give us pause.

The Saudi system of governance prior to his rise could be described as a consultative authoritarianism. The king would seek and receive advice from senior members of the royal family, as well as trusted court advisers. In a series of drastic steps, including the roundup of rival princes, the crown prince has effectively dismantled the old structure. Saudi Arabia is now the absolute monarchy that it wasn’t under King Abdullah, King Fahd or any of their predecessors.

Some have argued that serious reform would be impossible without a consolidation of power. But the crown prince’s efforts have gone from the decisive to the destabilizing. His recent shakedown of leading business figures had nothing to do with the rule of law and may have spooked investors. Recent figures show that foreign direct investment hit a 14-year low in Saudi Arabia last year (compared to an 8 percent rise in the neighboring United Arab Emirates).

In any case, the crown prince should have done away with the old system by allowing citizens space to have a say in the new Saudi Arabia that he is envisioning for them – allowing them to co-sign their new social contract. He is doing precisely the opposite.

Among those arrested so far is Essam Al Zamel, a young economist who ran the figures on Vision 2030 and offered criticisms and suggestions for improving it. Recent reports indicate he is being set up for serious charges that would justify long-term imprisonment.

He has also arrested moderate religious figures, including the young intellectual Abdullah Al Maliki, and ex-Wahhabi Muslim reformer Hassan Farhan Al Maliki. These figures could be effective advocates for religious reform, but instead they are facing charges that could put them away for a long time, alienating their support base.

Most recently, the crown prince has arrested Saudi Arabia’s leading women’s rights activists – including Loujain Al Hathloul, Eman Al Nafjan, and Aziza Al Yousuf – charging them with treason. These women have a long history of advocating for social reforms. But the government has treated them like threats instead of potential allies.

In short, the crown prince is promising economic reform while imprisoning economic reformers; he’s promising religious reform while imprisoning religious reformers; he’s promising social reform while imprisoning leading feminists. As he silences the once dynamic Saudi public sphere, note how these voices are being replaced: thousands of bots are flooding Saudi social media, many with pictures of the crown prince, cheering his every move.

The decision-making of the world’s largest oil exporter is now in the hand of a small number of individuals with no consultative process in place, and with dissenters immediately jailed.

Many of the crown prince’s big moves have deteriorated into protracted wars of attrition, such as the war in Yemen or the feud with Qatar. His mass arrest of the leading women’s rights activists is another potential quagmire.

Not only does it quite rightly tarnish his image among the global women’s rights community (in the age of #MeToo, no less), but it also threatens his economic reform agenda, considering that the crown prince’s ordered the detentions after a high-profile visit to the United States in which he met leading celebrities and business leaders. A war of attrition with the global women’s rights movement is not one that he is likely to win, despite his huge PR budget.

The crown prince should release the women’s rights activists, drop all charges against them, and allow them to continue their careers freely. That would be the best way to reassure the world that the reforms are real and remain on track.

For the sake of global stability, Saudi reforms need to be saved from Mohammed bin Salman’s absolutism and heavy-handedness. History shows that governments with no tolerance for dissent usually end up creating disasters.

L’émirat gazier s’accommode sans trop de dégâts du quasi-blocus imposé il y a un an par ses voisins arabes.

One of the key targets of the siege countries was Qatar’s vibrant and resource-rich hydrocarbons industry. The economic blockade was basically aimed at interrupting Qatar’s export of oil, gas and petrochemicals in all ways possible.
Qatar Petroleum (QP) and its group companies immediately managed to absorb the initial impact of those measures, and were able to continue operating and export normally without any disruption across all its oil and gas facilities.
Qatar’s announcement of its offshore North Field expansion has been well-received by the global energy industry, whose major players see great opportunities in partnering with QP on the largest single non-associated gas field in the world.
Qatar’s plan is to develop an export-oriented gas project in the North Field. Qatargas has been entrusted with executing this mega-project on behalf of QP.
The expansion of Qatar’s LNG production from the North Field is an important landmark in QP’s strategic growth plan and objectives of becoming one of the best national oil and gas companies in the world.
QP has already selected Japan’s Chiyoda Corp to execute the Front End Engineering and Design (FEED) of the onshore facilities of the North Field expansion project.

The facilities will produce an additional 23mn tonnes per year (tpy) of liquefied natural gas (LNG), which will raise Qatar’s production from 77mn tpy to 100mn tpy.
QP president and CEO Saad Sherida al-Kaabi said earlier that “the expansion of Qatar’s LNG production from the North Field is an important landmark in Qatar Petroleum’s strategic growth plan and objectives of becoming one of the best national oil & gas companies in the world.
“We are continuing discussions with potential international joint venture partners for this strategic project to determine an optimised arrangement with the objective of delivering maximum value to the State of Qatar and contribute to the optimal utilisation of Qatar’s natural resources.”
Another major project announced by QP recently was the development and operation of a new world scale petrochemicals complex at the Ras Laffan Industrial City.
The petrochemicals complex will include an ethane cracker with a capacity of more than 1.6mn tpy of ethylene, making it the “largest ethane cracker” in the Middle East, and one of the largest in the world.
The petrochemicals complex will also include world-class derivative plants, which will consolidate Qatar’s position among the leading petrochemicals producers in the world markets.
The engineering design of the petrochemicals complex should commence shortly, leading to a planned start-up in 2025.
QP has invited a group of leading international companies, with extensive experiences in the petrochemicals industry, to submit proposals for partnering with it in the development and operation of the new world scale petrochemicals complex.
The feedstock for the petrochemical complex will be ethane produced primarily from the new North Field LNG expansion project that will produce an additional 23mn tpy of LNG, as well as from existing gas projects producing ethane.
On the project, Qatar Petroleum President and CEO Saad Sherida al-Kaabi said, “This development is a first step towards the launch of a new world scale Petrochemicals Complex at Ras Laffan, marking another important milestone for Qatar Petroleum.”
Al-Kaabi added: “Petrochemicals represent a major pillar of our growth strategy to achieve our vision of becoming one of the best national oil companies in the world. This project will complement our efforts to implement our strategy, and will enable Qatar Petroleum to further expand its footprint in the global petrochemicals markets.”

Oil company bosses will travel to the Vatican this week to discuss climate change with Pope Francis.
The meeting will be on June 8 and June 9 at the Casina Pio IV villa in the Vatican, with an audience with the Pope on the second day, according to a spokesman. It is being organized by a department headed by Cardinal Peter Turkson, who helped write Pope Francis’ 2015 encyclical on climate.
“We look forward to the dialogue, and the opportunity to discuss how we can address climate change and opportunities in the energy transition,” a spokesman for Equinor ASA, Norway’s largest oil company, said in an e-mailed statement on Friday.
BP chief executive officer Bob Dudley will also travel to Rome for the meeting arranged by the University of Notre Dame, according to people familiar with the talks. The Pope has made climate change a cornerstone of his papacy, saying in an encyclical letter that the science around the topic is clear and that the Catholic Church should view it as a moral issue.
A spokeswoman for BP declined to comment. Exxon Mobil Corp and Eni SpA will also participate in the meeting, according to reports from Axios and Reuters. A spokesman for Royal Dutch Shell declined to comment on whether its CEO would be involved.
The University of Notre Dame didn’t respond to requests for comment.

Roudi Baroudi

It has been a year since the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia and a few other regional countries launched an attempt to subjugate Qatar by strangling the latter’s economy with an illegal air, land, and sea blockade. They have failed, and spectacularly so.

The effort – based largely on unsubstantiated accusations of Qatari support for terrorism but actually rooted in Saudi ambitions – has forced Qatar to spend more than it had budgeted, but money is one thing that the world’s largest exporter of LNG has no trouble obtaining. After a brief period of uncertainty, therefore, economic activities returned to their usual heady pace, and business is booming in most key sectors.

There were initial concerns about shortages of some food products and other imports, for instance, but prompt government action and the responses of certain friendly countries (most prominently Turkey) have emphatically quashed both short and medium-term fears. In addition, the experience has prompted Qatar to implement long-term food security plans that will blunt any future attempts at external blackmail. Some were worried, too, that what has become the longest air blockade since World War II would wreak havoc on the transport sector.

Qatar Airways, a widely recognised symbol of Qatar’s emergence as a genuine player on the international stage, was indeed inconvenienced by losing access to the airspace over KSA, the United Arab Emirates, Egypt, and Bahrain. While the flag carrier has been forced to take longer routes and use more fuel, however, it has only redoubled its resolve to keep Qatar connected with the rest of the world.

The airline was proud to carry the first emergency supplies into the country following the imposition of the blockade, and it has added (or announced plans to add) some two dozen new destinations over the past year. In the process, Qatar Airways also picked up no less than 50 individual awards in 2017, including “World’s Best Business Class” and “Best Airline in the Middle East”. In fact the primary victims of the Saudi-led campaign have been innocent citizens of Qatar and the very countries trying to isolate it: Some 16,000 GCC families with one or more dual-national members have been cruelly torn apart by the blockade, including thousands of children separated from at least one parent. If anything, the experience has only strengthened compassion and solidarity in Qatari society, with nationals and foreign residents alike offering mutual support to bolster resilience in the face of the embargo. Never has there been stronger collective resolve to defend Qatar’s freedom and independence.

Both the resilience and the resolve have been bolstered by the performance of the marine transport industry. The siege has not only sharply curtailed Qatar’s shipping and trans-shipping options (leaving Oman and Kuwait as its only GCC outlets), but also closed its only land border (with KSA), completely eliminating overland trade. Once again, this has imposed a few new costs and prompted a few added concerns, but Qatar’s ports are reaping the rewards: the numbers of both inbound and outbound cargo shipments have risen dramatically, spinning up business for everything from modern bulk and container terminals to small local harbors and the ancillary enterprises that serve them.

In the all-important energy sector, initial concerns about possible supply disruptions have been successfully addressed, with Qatar once again leading the world in LNG exports. In addition, Qatar Petroleum has announced plans to increase LNG production from 77 million tons per annum to 100 million MTPA, which should guarantee its No. 1 exporter status for another 20–25 years. Alongside the LNG expansion, Qatar also is scaling up its already world-class petrochemical industry, with QP recently announcing plans to build a massive new complex at Ras Laffan. The company is seeking qualified partners for the enormous project, which is centred on what will be the largest ethane cracker in the Middle East, and one of the largest anywhere, plus several derivatives plants, consolidating Qatar’s position as a major player in global petchem markets.

Moreover, the entire episode has only underlined the stabilising role that Qatar has long played in the dynamics of global energy security by, inter alia, continuing to stress dialogue and diplomacy as the best means of boosting market stability, thereby protecting the interests of producers and consumers alike. Faced with serious obstacles thrown up by the blockade, Qatar’s energy sector moved quickly and decisively to ensure that its obligations would be met, and this despite conditions meeting the definition of force majeure.

It fine-tuned the tasking and disposition of its LNG carrier fleet, making even more efficient use of these assets to ensure timely deliveries to TransAtlantic, Trans-Pacific, Mediterranean, and Indian Ocean clients. It expanded and deepened cooperation with buyers and sellers to better coordinate supply with demand, further burnishing its credentials as a reliable partner. As a consequence, Qatar reaffirmed its unmatched ability to protect security of supply at any point in time, improving both security and competitiveness in world markets.

Qatar was likewise successful in demonstrating that it remains a highly attractive place to do business. Since the unlawful siege began, the government has continued to secure new foreign direct investment from some of the world’s most important oil and gas companies, including ExxonMobil, Shell, and TOTAL. Over the same period, more than 120 entities received licensing from the Qatar Financial Center, a massive increase on the previous 12-month period for the QFC platform, which confers significant benefits on registered companies, including legal and financial environments based on English common law.

Going forward, all available data suggest that the leadership’s response to the crisis, and Qatar’s world-class financial and economic credentials, have enabled business activity to remain as robust as ever. In fact, senior officials expect growth of about 3% for 2018, meaning that in spite of the blockade, Qatar’s economy will out-perform those of most neighboring countries. In addition to all of these economic and financial successes, Qatar also has used the past year to achieve significant advances in social policy.

Nowhere was this more prominent than in the area of progressive new labor legislation, particularly as regards expatriate workers. New laws passed in 2017 give such workers several new protections, including guarantees for regular payment of wages into local bank accounts, development of mechanisms to resolve labor disputes, and the establishment of a new committee to counter human trafficking. On the geopolitical level, the entire episode has only increased Qatar’s soft power by attracting the sympathy of governments and people around the world, the great majority of whom know a manufactured crisis when they see one.

On the other hand, the failed Saudi-led attempt to isolate Qatar has managed to both exacerbate existing tensions within the GCC and to generate new ones. It also has divided much of the Arab and Islamic worlds, forced smaller countries to make impossible choices, and exposed the extent to which some governments use their financial resources to bribe or coerce those of less affluent societies. The crisis even briefly divided the top echelons of the Trump Administration in its early days. Since then, Washington has been consistent in advocating a peaceful resolution of the dispute: President Trump has offered to mediate, and then-CIA Director Mike Pompeo (now secretary of state) visited Saudi Arabia in April to warn that “Enough is enough.”

Washington also has reaffirmed its security commitments to Doha on other levels, including the continuation of its large presence at Qatar’s massive Al-Udeid Air Base. The facility, which hosts the headquarters of the Pentagon’s Central Command and more than 10,000 US and allied troops, is far and away the most important staging point for coalition air operations against terror groups across the entire region, from Syria and Iraq to Yemen and Afghanistan. In addition, the US government has approved the sale of up to 72 F-15 fighter-bombers for the Qatar Emiri Air Force. Other major powers also have lined up to help Qatar maintain its independence and, if necessary, defend its borders.

Britain, for instance, has agreed to sell Qatar at least two dozen of its multi-role Eurofighter Typhoons; France has committed to providing at least 36 of its Rafale fighters, plus almost 500 of its latest VBCI armored vehicles; and Turkey has accelerated the deployment of its troops and equipment to its own recently activated base near Doha. Several countries have continued to plan and hold joint military exercises with Qatar, and Russia has agreed to cooperation in military supplies and air defense, possibly including sales of its highly touted S-400 system.

Given these and other manifestations of support, the position of the broader international community — i.e. those not susceptible to either largesse or intimidation – is not in doubt, which means that the longer the blockading countries and their followers try to bully Qatar, the more isolated they become. By contrast, the crisis has revealed the Qatari state to have ample planning and policymaking resources. This has allowed the leadership to carry out a comprehensive response to the unlawful siege, including emergency measures to dilute the initial shock of the blockade, the fostering of greater competition in the marketplace, improved energy efficiency, and a highly ambitious program of economic self-sufficiency – all underpinned by enormously successful diplomatic and public relations campaigns.

Overall, the outlook is very positive, which is far better than anyone might have expected and indicates that Qatar will continue to play the roles for which it has become known on the world stage: championing the cause of stable, free-flowing, and competitive energy supplies; running an open, dynamic economy; providing cleaner fuels for customers around the world; developing massive new LNG capacity for global clients that will catalyse and stabilise global energy markets for years to come; advocating (and even mediating) dialogue over conflict; and exerting a moderating influence on an often volatile region.

Qatar is committed to Global Energy Partnership. All this helps to explain why Doha has refrained, on almost every level, from retaliating for the blockade by taking its own punitive measures. Solid energy policies have allowed Qatar to master the politics of LNG production and supply, and its gas sector has continued to honored all of its worldwide commitments, including those to buyers in the blockading countries. The latter are only shooting themselves in the foot by continuing their efforts to ostracise Qatar, and Doha works to maintain channels of communication so that if and when a change of heart is forthcoming, there are no obstacles to a reconciliation among brothers.

Roudi Baroudi is CEO of Energy and Environment Holding, an independent consultancy based in Doha.

The European Central Bank’s 20th anniversary arrives today as another financial scare – this time in Mario Draghi’s Italian homeland – shows that the euro area still hasn’t grown up.
It’s a chance for the ECB president to remind governments that their political project, to create a monetary union out of economically and culturally disparate sovereign nations, is far from finished. As anti-establishment populists gain ground across the bloc, the risk is that the single currency’s weaknesses could allow it to be ripped apart.
Italy highlighted that tension this week when a euro-sceptic finance minister nominated by democratically elected politicians was vetoed by the nation’s president, putting the country on course for new polls. Bond yields soared in the country, but also in neighbouring Spain and Greece, awakening memories of 2012 when investors bet the eurozone would splinter.
“The euro keeps catching up with the effects of the last crisis and then another one breaks,” said David Marsh, head of OMFIF, a think-tank for central banking, and author of books on the history of the euro. “Either you move to some kind of political union with genuine pooling of sovereignty – a genuine sharing of risks including necessary debt restructuring, which is pretty large step – or a danger of some catastrophic crisis or a breakup becomes more acute.”
Some of those concerns will be addressed by European Union leaders at a summit on June 28-29, where German Chancellor Angela Merkel and French President Emmanuel Macron have pledged to present a joint initiative to boost the union’s resilience.
Major progress might be hard to agree on though, as Merkel faces resistance from among her allies and parts of the opposition. She’s unlikely to loosen her stance given that Italy’s election earned victories for parties promising big spending in the country that already has the euro area’s largest debt burden.
“The main issue is that participation in the euro requires countries to respect certain conditions and rules,” said Francesco Papadia, who was head of the ECB’s market operations from 1998 to 2012 and is now a senior fellow at the Bruegel think-tank in Brussels. “If these conditions and rules are not respected, the construction is shaken.”
The ECB itself is certainly is stronger than on June 1, 1998, when it was formed out of the European Monetary Institute and set up in a rented tower block in downtown Frankfurt. That was seven months before the euro was introduced.
“European Monetary Union was an hubristic endeavour from the start, full of unprecedented ambition in historical terms. The initial minimalist design didn’t do justice to the wide-ranging implications of the project. The framework is not yet complete and is still risking existential threats” ECB vice president Vitor Constancio said on May 17.
The central bank has taken on responsibility for banking supervision, and developed powerful new tools such as quantitative easing, negative interest rates and free bank loans to guide the eurozone through two financial crises and avert the risk of deflation. Eurozone membership has jumped to 19 countries from 11.
Yet it also became a lightning rod for public discontent. Its new €1.3bn ($1.5bn) headquarters was a focal point for riots in 2015, and the institution was in the crossfire the same year as Greece was forced to impose capital controls. Core countries Germany, France, the Netherlands and Austria have all seen the rise of political groups opposed to the euro and to deeper integration.
Sweden’s Riksbank, the world’s oldest central bank, is celebrating its 350th anniversary this year. Speakers at a conference last week to mark the occasion included the heads of the 324-year-old Bank of England, Mark Carney, and the 105-year-old Federal Reserve, Jerome Powell.
The ECB is a newborn in comparison, but one tasked with being the custodian for the world’s second-biggest currency.
“Can a currency survive without a political union, a monetary union without a political union?” Otmar Issing, the institution’s first chief economist, said at the event. “How must the monetary union be reformed to make it less fragile in the context of crises? These are the challenges which the ECB will be confronted with for, I am afraid, some time to come.”
Outgoing ECB vice president Constancio echoed that sentiment in more granular form in a video posted on Twitter yesterday, the day of his retirement.
“The crisis itself showed that the initial design of the monetary union was insufficient,” he said, highlighting flaws from a lack of common deposit insurance to the need for a region-wide capital market. “Monetary union, being a collective endeavour, needs at the centre a macro stabilisation function – and that has to be done by introducing a stronger coordination of fiscal policies.”

Hey, euro! For a while there, you looked like a goner. During those debt crisis days in 2012 when Greece was imploding and Spain’s banks were teetering and the Germans were asking why they had to pick up the bill, there was a serious wobble. Common European currency? Remind us, please, what Europeans actually have in common. Now with Britain heading out of the European Union and Greece in a perpetual pinch, there are constant reminders of the euro’s shortcomings. Though the rules governing the 19-nation shared currency have been tightened since the crisis, there’s still a regular chorus of business leaders and politicians who say that its demise is just a matter of time. The latest challenge: populist politicians capitalizing on discontent and targeting the euro. Can the world’s most ambitious financial experiment survive?

The Situation

As the euro stumbled on, wealthier nations in the north were often pitted against poorer ones in the south, amplifying the differences among them. Anti-EU protest parties have gained support from voters fed up with the failings of other member countries and the loss of control to bureaucrats in Brussels. Withdraw from the euro is a rallying cry for Italy’s Five Star Movement and Marine Le Pen’s National Front in France, which rattled investors before a presidential election in May with promises to redenominate the country’s debt. Greece has struggled to qualify for crucial loans after surrendering to its third bailout in five years in 2015 to remain part of the euro. Months of bitter disagreement and Germany’s insistence on more austerity left a lingering sense that Greece will have to leave the currency union eventually. Europe’s slow recovery from a double-dip recession hasn’t helped, with euro-zone unemployment forecast to remain above 9 percent for a ninth year in 2017. The euro dropped by the most on record in June 2016 on the surprise decision by British voters to leave the EU, even though the U.K. is not part of the common currency.

The Background

The precursor to the EU was set up in 1958, as the continent’s leaders vowed to make another war between them all but impossible. The euro came in 1999, when a group of 11 countries jettisoned marks, francs and lire and turned control of interest rates over to a new central bank. The common currency’s scale provided exchange-rate stability and better access to world markets. It Un homme tabassé par les gendarmes _ Comores Infosdid not, however, impose uniform financial discipline; to avoid surrendering national sovereignty, politicians largely sidestepped a unified approach to bank regulation and government spending. To the extent that there were rules, they were flouted. The events that brought the euro to its knees came during the global rout in 2009, when Greece came clean and said its budget deficit was twice as wide as forecast. Investors started dumping assets of the most indebted nations and borrowing costs soared. The shared euro made it impossible to devalue individual currencies of weaker economies, limiting options for recovery. Politicians lurched through bailouts for Greece, Ireland, Portugal and Cyprus plus a rescue of banks in Spain. The panic fueled fears of a breakup as fragile banks and their holdings of government bonds exposed the common currency’s vulnerabilities. The firestorm abated in July 2012, when European Central Bank President Mario Draghi pledged to do “whatever it takes” to save the euro.

The Argument
Euro-area leaders say the common currency is now more resilient in the face of shocks. They argue that even if Greece were to fall out of the euro, the currency would survive, though there’s a vigorous debate about how serious the economic and political consequences would be. New systems have been put in place to centralize bank supervision and build firewalls between troubled debtors and taxpayers. The measures still may not have gone far enough. Aspirations by the euro’s founders for an “ever closer union” — including more oversight of national budgets and the pooling of debt — have not been realized. For some observers, the euro’s flaws simply sow the seeds for another crisis.