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If you compare the size of our reserves of Saudi Arabia and the whole Middle East, it's like three times as much as all of that combined and that's just the easily, readily available 1800 billion barrels and there are probably 3 billion barrels that are commercially just under that, available.

The Saudi government uses a lot of British equipment to suppress their own people. But we're happy for our politicians to go on advertising trips to Saudi, selling our weapons at the trade conventions.

But the key thing is that Iraq, while it's got very large oil reserves, has marginalized itself as an oil exporter and these days its exports are only about one tenth that of neighboring Saudi Arabia.

A lot of the economy is indeed being supplied by goods that are produced offshore. And much of the reason for that is societal.

Saudi Arabia is, of course, the keystone of OPEC. Saudi Arabia has had the distinction of remaining stable through all the escalating tumult of recent decades, reliably pumping out its roughly 10 million barrels a day like Bossy the cow in America's oil import barn.

But Saudi Arabia is surprising in a lot of ways. Like any place, or any people, it relentlessly defies easy categorization.

Saudi Arabia has allowed training on its soil of American forces.

That's the premise of the Saudi Arabians. He's holding the president's hand with one. In the other hand, he's got his hand in the pocket of American consumers.

There are two perspectives on the oil sands. You have companies that want to make it the next Saudi Arabia. The other is that it's a transitional resource to a low-carbon economy, and to regard it as anything else is to drain the continent's financial resources.