If you trade oil futures, chances are you are jumping up and down right about now. "Crude oil futures jumped nearly $2 a barrel Friday after a Saudi official reported an explosion at a major oil refinery in eastern Saudi Arabia," reports USA Today. "The Web site of MSNBC, citing a foreign television report, said that Saudi forces had killed suicide bombers who tried to attack the Abqaiq refinery using at least two vehicles," the Street added. "The targeted facility handles around two-thirds of Saudi Arabia’s oil output. Saudi Arabia is the world’s top oil exporter."

Although it is too early to blame "al-Qaeda" for the attack, the BBC nudged the story in that direction. "The al-Qaeda network on the Arabian Peninsula has long called for attacks on Saudi oil installations," it reported. Reuters and CNN International felt compelled to mention the phantom terrorist organization as well. No doubt, by this time tomorrow, the corporate media will take it as fact "al-Qaeda" and the dead Osama bin Laden are responsible for the botched attack at the Abqaiq facility, described by Strategic Forecasting as "among Saudi Arabia’s most critical energy facilities, serving as a processing facility that sees some two-thirds of the country’s 10 million barrels per day (bpd) of daily output."

Stratfor also reminds us "of a call from al Qaeda second-in-command Ayman al-Zawahiri that the war against the Saudi government had failed and attacks against oil infrastructure should commence…. If the explosion was in fact linked to militants in the kingdom [and it will be in the next day or so], it is an indication that although the militancy has been largely contained for more than a year—since the Dec. 27, 2004, attempted attack against the Saudi Interior Ministry Building in Riyadh, the militant infrastructure and ideology has not been entirely destroyed. Further, the attack indicates that the militants have shifted their target set from the government itself to the government’s sources of funding and power" and of course a critical source of oil to a world in need of repeated reminding how dangerous "al-Qaeda" is now that the "war on terrorism" has gained new momentum in preparation for an attack against Iran, Syria, elements in Lebanon (Hezbollah) and occupied Palestine (the Israeli created Hamas).

It is no mistake this attack follows directly on the heels of the mosque bombing in Samarra, Iraq, and the Prophet Mohammed cartoon provocation with its emotional and sensational response by outraged Muslims around the world. The idea here is to barrage Americans and Europeans with incessant and scary imagery of crazy and violent Muslims and Arabs and, specifically with the botched Abqaiq oil refinery bombing—keep in mind that we shouldn’t actually expect "al-Qaeda" to bomb an installation so critical to the neoliberal profiteering scheme—threatening the oil umbilical cord.

"The memory of the 1973 oil embargo made the oil markets oversensitive to the ebb and flow of the Israeli-Palestinian issue, despite the fact that the neither Israelis nor the Palestinians consume, produce or transit major amounts of crude. Al Qaeda has now presented something much more concrete to worry about," Stratfor continues. "No significant oil asset has found itself under militant attack since the Sept. 11 attacks; Abqaiq is one of the world’s most critical pieces of energy infrastructure. Simply that it was selected for targeting by al Qaeda should be reason enough—and a sound reason at that—for some panic."

In fact, the 1973 "oil embargo" was a scheme devised by the Bilderberg Group—"a bunch of rich guys who happen to get together once a year for a bit of harmless fun," as Jack Robertson sarcastically describes them, but in fact a cabal of elite globalists involved in the Council on Foreign Relations, the Pilgrims Society, and the Trilateral Commission. This astronomically profitable scheme was documented by F. William Engdahl in 1992 (A Century of War: Anglo-American Oil Politics and the New World Order).

"In 1973, the powerful men grouped around Bilderberg decided to launch a colossal assault against industrial growth in the world, in order to tilt the balance of power back to the advantage of Anglo-American financial interests. In order to do this, they determined to use their most prized weapon—control of the world’s oil flows. Bilderberg policy was to trigger a global oil embargo in order to force a dramatic increase in world oil prices. Since 1945, world oil trade had, by international custom, been priced in dollars. American oil companies dominated the postwar market. A sharp sudden increase in the world price of oil, therefore, meant an equally dramatic increase in world demand for US dollars to pay for that necessary oil" (see Pepe Escobar, Asia Times May 10, 2005).

In short, the "the ebb and flow of the Israeli-Palestinian issue" has little to do with the price of oil—and if it did, the "issue" could be easily solved by granting the Palestinians their own state, as initially proposed, or at minimum allowing them full social and political rights as Israeli citizens, something likely to happen when Hell freezes over.

In essence, the recent attack on the exposed Saudi oil infrastructure by "al-Qaeda in Saudi Arabia" (a covert black op similar to "al-Qaeda in Iraq" or for that matter "al-Qaeda" in Toledo, Ohio) is an effort to convince us "our" oil is at risk, as it will be at risk late next month when the Iranian oil bourse is introduced as direct competition to New York’s NYMEX and London’s IPE (see William Clark, The Real Reasons Why Iran is the Next Target: The Emerging Euro-denominated International Oil Marker).

"We can’t rule out the possibility that secret cells are working on a massive strike on Ras Tanura or Abqaiq," a Saudi oil industry consultant told Reuters after a shooting "rampage" at a petrochemical complex in Saudi Arabia in early 2004. "Hitting Abqaiq would be catastrophic. It would bring the kingdom to its knees." According to Reuters, the "most apocalyptic version would be a full scale hit in the east of the kingdom on Ras Tanura, the world’s biggest offshore oil loading facility, or Abqaiq center which handles some five million bpd of oil pumped from the giant Ghawar field."

In addition to a possible neoliberal effort to more effectively control and thus profit from oil, there is the antagonism of the Straussian neocons, who hate everything Muslim. One need look no further than Laurent Murawiec, who told the Straussian neocon infested Defense Policy Board at the Pentagon precisely what they wanted to hear: Saudi Arabia is the "kernel of evil" and "the strategic pivot" of the Middle East (see Gary Leupp, "On Terrorism, Methodism, Saudi 'Wahhabism’ and the Censored 9-11 Report"). In a plan that probably warmed the cockles of neoliberal hearts far and wide, Murawiec "declared Saudi Arabia an enemy of the United States and advocated that the United States invade the country, seize its oil fields, and confiscate its financial assets unless the Saudis stop supporting the anti-Western terror network," as Jack Shafer of Slate characterized it. Of course, the Straussian neocons are not sincerely concerned about this last part since the CIA created what is now called "al-Qaeda," with more than a bit of help from Pakistan and plenty of money from Saudi Arabia.

Moreover, according to Leupp, the neocon "Hudson Institute’s co-founder Max Singer presented a paper to the Pentagon’s Office of Net Assessment, in which (’thinking outside the box’ as Rumsfeld likes to say), he urged the dismemberment of Saudi Arabia, in the spirit of the post-World War I reconfiguration of what had been Ottoman Arab territory. The Eastern Province of Saudi Arabia could, Singer argued, constitute a new Muslim Republic of East Arabia, peopled primarily by Shiite Muslims unsympathetic to the dominant 'Wahhabi’ (more properly, Muwahhidun) school of Islam in Saudi Arabia, leaving Mecca and Medina in the hands of the 'Wahhabis’ while placing the oil fields [and the Abqaiq oil refinery], concentrated in the east, in the hands of western oil companies."

British MP, George Galloway, according to Sasha Lilley ("A New Age of Empire"), in 2002 warned of "a plan for the division of the Middle East is circulating in the corridors of power on both sides of the Atlantic…. In a recent interview, Galloway asserted that ministers and eminent figures in the British government are deliberating the partition of the Middle East, harking back to the colonial map-making in the first quarter of the 20th century that established the modern nation-states of the region. An Anglo-American war against Iraq, he tells me, could be the opening salvo in the break up of the region."

In fact, a plan to "break up of the region," including Saudi Arabia has existed for decades, as documented by the late Israeli author Israel Shahak. "The plan operates on two essential premises," explains Khalil Nakhleh, a member of the Palestinian Ministry of Education. "To survive, Israel must 1) become an imperial regional power, and 2) must effect the division of the whole area into small states by the dissolution of all existing Arab states. Small here will depend on the ethnic or sectarian composition of each state," and, as well, the "composition" of natural resources under the ground of states balkanized through engineered ethnic and sectarian strife.

Of course, this plan may literally go up in smoke, if we are to believe Gerald Posner. "Saudi Arabia, bracing for the possibility of an attack either by an outside power or restive Shiite residents, implemented an intricate doomsday plan in the 1980s giving officials the power to blow up their own oil wells," writes Rick Shenkman in a review of Posner’s book (Secrets of the Kingdom: The Inside Story of the Secret Saudi-U.S. Connection). "In the event of an attack, says Posner, the Saudis would trigger a series of 'dirty bomb’ explosions designed to destroy use of the kingdom’s oil supplies for decades."

Poser’s thesis may seem outlandish—until you consider in 1991, Saddam Hussein’s retreating troops blew up and set ablaze many of Kuwait’s oil fields and spilled more than 30 million barrels of oil, creating an immense environmental catastrophe. It is perfect natural to assume this would happen again on a far larger scale if the Straussian neocons and their pilfering neoliberal partners in crime attempt to divide up and loot the oil-rich Middle East. It should be noted, according to Iraqi oil ministry sources, as of last July Iraq suffered "around $11.35 billion in damages to oil sector infrastructure and lost revenue since oil exports resumed" after the invasion and occupation.

In short, an outraged and determined resistance is capable of inflicting more damage on oil profits than "al-Qaeda in Saudi Arabia" or Iraq or wherever.