Kuwait : A Largest Export Economy

Currently Saudi Arabia is one of the leading producers of oil in the world. However, it is losing its foothold on the market. Many countries, like North America, are increasing their oil production and are looking for ways to become less dependent on foreign oil. The increased competition has caused oil prices to decrease. By producing their own oil, countries not only will increase their revenues, but will also reduce their need to rely on foreign oil. By reducing their need foreign an oil a country does not have to worry that their oil supply will be cut off if they go to war.

The Gulf houses half of the world’s oil reserves and a third of the natural gas. The Gulf States still continue to supply the international markets with a significant amount of the hydrocarbons. The stability of the region is crucial for the stability in the global oil markets. The Gulf also hosts one of the most strategically and important choke points in global trade, The Straits of Hormuz, which moves about 35% of the global seaborne oil, natural gas and other trade goods.

The chapter by Manabu Shimizu focuses on Japan’s efforts in oil exploration and the country’s future goals in the oil industry. Since Japan imports all of its oil, the “challenge is to establish a long-term, sustainable oil supply” (Shimizu 113). Japan has begun to fund Central Asian oil exploration in the hopes of a big oil market being produced for that region. However, Japan does not intend to import oil from Central Asia, rather they want other regions to do import. By doing so, some of the production pressure is lifted from the Middle East, which is where most of Japan’s oil comes from. At the moment, the Middle East is the main producer of oil for many countries with great power over the market, and Japan hopes to create another market

The term globalization can be defined as a process by which societies, regional economies and cultures have been integrated via a global network of transportation, communication and trade. It has both positive and negative impacts in all the areas that it touches on be it economical, social, technology, cultural, political, environment, health or any other. Globalization started to have an impact on businesses world wide in the eighteenth century since that time marks the merging of modernity and globalization. However, in the modern sence, globalization kicked off after the end of Second World War since its during that time that leaders felt the urge to break down the borders

Despite the various resources like petroleum, natural gas, phosphate, and sulfur located in Iraq, their economy is established mainly on oil. This is a result of Iraq being home to the world’s fifth largest oil reserves. All the oil in Iraq comes from the following cities: Basra, Baghdad, Ramadi, and lastly Ba’aj. The country contains about 160 billion barrels of oil within its land’s reserves. Not only do other countries depend on Iraq for their oil exports, most of the country’s energy comes from oil as well. It is said that about 94% of the energy that

Kuwait supplies much of the world’s oil supplies, and when Hussein invaded Kuwait, he controlled 24% of the world’s oil supplies (O’Hara). Though this is a good reason, it is not the only one. Iraq’s real excuse for annexing Kuwait was that he believed that Kuwait was producing more oil than it was supposed to, taking out of Iraq’s

In 1997 the sales of natural gas surged in 1997 as one of Qatar’s North Field came on line (Beard, p. 18). This specific event contributed to a total GDP of approximately 30% (Beard, p. 18). Further development in 04’ can be directly attributed to transportation, storage, hotels, bank and finance and government. Again, Qatar’s reinvestment in their community enables them to function and thrive even with any imbalances in the gas and oil industry that many other countries base their entire GDP to. Further growth was seen through Qatar’s history though. Specifically, in 2008, Qatar’s capital was believed to have peaked. Further contributing factors are the positive traits that coincided not only with the factors that enabled them to grow not only in the hydrocarbon sector nonetheless the non-hydrocarbon sector as well. The labor growth within Qatar has indefinitely increase. Specifically, many workers have migrated from one sector of growth to the other. The IMF stated that, “Qatar’s population rose from approximately 650 000 in 2001 to 1.9 million in 2013. The employment-to-population ratio rose from 48 percent in 2001 to 68 percent in 2007 and more than 85 percent in 2013. As a result, growth in GDP per worker has been slower than growth in GDP per population (Table 1). This is illustrated in the case of the non-hydrocarbon sector, which appears to be growing fast in per-capita terms but not in per-worker terms” (Beard, p. 20). However, with this population increase occurring, production by these workers lacked. IMF found that this production was in decline from 01’ through 09’, but then elevated in 12’ with a slight decline yet again in 2013. This may only be explained by the shift of labor to the construction sector of the

This oil rich country is vibrant and economically strong. According to Roy Sudip of Euromoney, Qatar has the world’s third biggest gas reserves, equivalent to more than 300 years-worth of stock at both current and forecast production rates, as well as significant oil reserves (https: web-b-ebscohost.com). Furthermore, its GDP is $212 billion and GDP per capita ranked 5th in the world. Qatar has one of the highest standard of living and economic productivity. Its annual growth rate has averaged just over 19 percent in 2006 – 11, driven by the country’s growing liquefied natural gas

To analyze whether this is true for individual countries requires further breaking down of the data. The United States, Japan, China, South Korea, India, and Germany are almost always in the top six for importers and Saudi Arabia, Russia, Iran, Nigeria, and the United Arab Emirates are almost always in the top five for exporters, with the bottom half of the top ten importers and exporters varying year by year. The top importers tend to be more static than the top exporters; that is, there are only about eleven countries that switch up between the ten importing spots over that period whereas

Saddam Hussein felt smothered, and unable to find money to repay the other Arab states for Iraq's previous war with Iran. The only way for Iraq to obtain revenue was through oil exports. Kuwait, who didn’t need the extra revenue, was overproducing which drove prices down, and drove Saddam's frustration up (Wilson, 1995). Enough time has elapsed to study the economic impact of the Gulf War on the region. Most of the economic costs were incurred by Iraq. Losses in military equipment alone totaled over $50 billion (Wilson, 1995). The time and effort needed to repair the damage and build replacement facilities will take years to accomplish. This will also be difficult for Iraq because of the pending arms embargo on the state. The economic position may be easier for Kuwait, although the impact is still hard-felt. The most expansive damage was that inflicted upon the oil installations. Overall, the costliest damage was the environmental disaster caused by the oil slicks, which cost more the $700 million to clean-up (Wilson, 1995). From 1991-1992, Kuwait's oil industry severely deteriorated and suffered a massive drop in production due the destruction of their oil wells. Kuwait's Gross Domestic Product (GDP) increased as a result of its growing oil industry. Namely, oil exports were on the rise once again. Still, the economic costs incurred by Kuwait will have to be managed for a long time. Moreover, there remains

Saudi Arabia has an economy that is largely dependent on oil, with the government maintaining the biggest control over the country 's significant economic activities. Saudi Arabia owns about 16% of the global oil reserves and is the number one exporter of oil (Saudi Arabia, 2013). In addition, the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia was instrumental in the formation of the OPEC (Organization of the Petroleum Exporting Countries) group, which initially comprised Iraq, Venezuela, Iran, Kuwait and Venezuela (Energy indicators, 2004). Currently, the petroleum industry constitutes about 80% of the country 's budgetary incomes; about 40% of the country 's GDP and 87% of Saudi 's export earnings. Agriculture, in addition to petroleum products, has been a major contributor to the kingdom’s economy since 1970s (Saudi Arabia, 2013). The country has been able to produce enough agricultural products for their consumption as well as surplus for exportation to the GCC member countries.

Saudi Arabia has an oil-based economy. Shipments of oil account for 87 percent of total exports and for 46 percent of GDP. In recent years, in order to diversify the economy, the government has been investing in telecommunications, petrochemicals, natural gas exploitation and power generation sectors.

Among the countries in the Middle East, Saudi Arabia contains some of the largest markets with over 27 million consumers and several global enterprises. Saudi society is often described as young, dynamic and affluent which often cause rapid growth in several sectors. It has the world 's 19th largest economy and the region 's highest influx of FDI. Public-private partnerships are not uncommon in the Kingdom which allows many avenues for venture capital funding. Furthermore, public expenditures on education is around 5.8 percent of the country 's GDP which is the highest among the Middle Eastern countries. Although the societies in Saudi Arabia have very different cultural and market norms than Western countries like

The UAE is one of the riches nations in the world as measure by per capita GNP. The economy is primarily based on the oil

The UAE 's economy is the most diversified in the Gulf and the wider region. There’s no income tax. The gross domestic product is 67,616 dollars US per capita. The country oil and gas reserves are among the richest in the world. Successful efforts at economic diversification have reduced the portion of GDP based on oil and gas output to twenty five percent with a plan to push it to zero within next fifty years (Renewable Energy Prospects: United Arab Emirates p. 30). Low prices of oil have prompted the UAE to take steps to reduce its spending on country wide social programs, including eliminating fuel subsidies in August 2015. The IMF recently praised the vision and fiscal policies adopted by the country that