Long Live the King Follow

Saudi Arabia's King Abdullah died yesterday.

When these adorable pictures of GW and the King were published my opinion of the x-prez softened a little.

Will oil, and subsequently, gas prices go up or down in response to the passing of the King?

The drop in gas prices is due to a sluggish economy across most of the world. However, Saudi Arabia has kept on full-speed pumping oil throughout and said they had no plans to slow down. Theory I've heard is because they know it's hurting Iran and, like Walmart and a corner store, Saudi Arabia has enough cash in the bank to take the hits with the goal of driving the other guy into the ground. The drop in oil is also hurting the Russian economy though Iran is usually stated as the main target. I'm not saying any of this as gospel, just stuff I've read in "What's up with these gas prices" columns and blurbs around the net.

Knowing next to nothing about the Saudi monarchy, I'm assuming that whoever is next in line has been raised and groomed with the party line and would hold roughly the same ideas. Even if the Saudis did slow oil production, it would just put the marginally productive wells back into play. In theory their production would also hurt US operations but the US is less dependent on oil production for the economy and, from what I've read, the shale operations that fueled (heh) the US oil boom are very quick and relatively cheap to set up compared to the traditional deep well operations.

Also, the other day I was annoyed to buy gas and see that the local stations were charging over two dollars a gallon. thankfully, this morning it was back to $1.84