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54 Opinion
bne November 2017
that road with a principal agreement between the Russia Direct Investment Fund (RDIF) and the Saudi Arabia Public Investment Fund (PIF) to jointly invest $10bn in projects.
The big projects are likely to be in the energy sector. Saudi Arabia lost its crown as the world's biggest oil exporter to Russia several years ago as the latter has invested heavily in value-added processing in refineries and petrochemicals and is today the world’s biggest refined product exporter. Russia
is also the world’s biggest gas exporter and, as the Novatek- Total Yamal project comes on stream, will become one of the world’s biggest liquefied natural gas (LNG) exporters. Saudi is still predominantly a crude oil exporter and needs to diversify, especially as the longer-term future demand for crude oil becomes increasingly uncertain in the age of electric engines.
Speculation is rife about joint ventures under negotiation between the Russian state and private enterprises in petrochemicals and, possibly, an LNG project or even co-investment in some Arctic projects. That would certainly suit the kingdom's declared diversification programme and also provide funding to Russian energy projects that are restrained by US sanctions from easily accessing western capital markets.
Undoubtedly there are many in the Kremlin administration who would be happy to be able to announce a joint venture in
Trump goes for fixing not nixing Iran nuclear deal
Will Conroy in Prague
So in the end it was simply braggadocio. Donald Trump didn't have the balls to go for an immediate shooting down of the nuclear deal with Iran.
That will be the line taken by his most scathing critics after a much anticipated October 13 White House announcement in which the commander-in-chief laid out his new strategy towards Tehran and the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA), the greatest foreign policy achievement of his predecessor Barack Obama and an accord that Trump so despises, having called it “the worst deal ever” and “an embarrassment” to America.
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gas with Saudi Arabia at a time when the US is accused by the European Commission in Brussels of using sanctions to push its (more expensive) gas to Europe. Saudi involvement in any such project would also make it sanctions proof and would again provide an example of good business and good politics combining.
Saudi Arabia's neighbour, the UAE, will commission its first nuclear power plant in 2018 and Riyadh is known to be considering its own programme. The reason is that, with one of the fastest growing populations in the world, it is using more and more oil at home and reducing valuable export volumes. An alternative source of power, of which nuclear
is just one, would cut the oil export erosion.
Agriculture is another key area where we may see coop- eration. Russia will again be the world's biggest exporter
of wheat this year and, despite concerns over quality, the county clearly has the potential to be a much bigger exporter of a whole range of food items. Saudi is one of the world’s biggest importers of food and has made billion-dollar invest- ments in African and Central Asian states to secure supply. Investment in Russia, especially now that the Kremlin has made the modernisation of the agriculture sector a priority under the localisation strategy, would move Saudi’s food supply to a more secure level.
Anti-Trump protesters in Ardabil, Iranian Azerbaijan region.
Ranged against Trump, determined that the deal should survive even a 'nuclear no', are the major European Union powers, Russia and China, in fact almost the whole world apart from Israel and Iran's regional arch-rival Saudi Arabia. And that's not to mention US Secretary of State Rex Tiller- son and Pentagon chief Jim Mattis, the nuanced remarks of whom have lately made it quite clear that they think staying in the multilateral deal is certainly, for now, in their country's national interest. So what's a president, who for years before entering the Oval Office had boasted to his base that he would nix the JCPOA at the first opportunity, to do?