ABSTRACT
The prophecies of gloom and doom were based on analyses on two levels. With respect to oil and energy markets the prevalent view was that the escalation in oil prices would hardly dent world oil consumption, and since the Arab oil producers, and particularly Saudi Arabia, had a dominant position with respect to the world’s known oil reserves, the demand for their oil would continue to grow, and prices would inexorably rise. These small-population countries could not possibly spend more than a fraction of their huge and growing flood of oil revenues. Recent months have seen a flurry of predictions that an oil crisis will overtake the oil-importing nations in the 1990s. The decline in financial aid, and in trade and tourism, coupled with the oil exporters’ wholesale dismissals of the nationals of the poorer Arab countries, is already weighing heavily on Egypt, Syria, Jordan, and others.
