This may be surprising to those conditioned to expect miserable poverty except where oil has enriched a few.

FORBES

Though blessed with natural resources, especially the oil that has enriched Arab dynasties and their subservient elites while often leaving the masses in penury, few Arab countries have seen their non-oil economies flourish or their people enjoy the public services or freedoms taken for granted elsewhere.

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But it's the high price of oil that has kept the economy going and notably enriched a clique of Putin friends from St.

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Number one, the Arab oil embargo and the subsequent increase in the price of oil in 1973 as a result of the Yom Kippur War really enriched Saudi Arabia.

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