The Saudi Plastics Empire? Is Such A Thing Possible?

[DistressedAmerican]

I was talking to my sister the other day about our mutual hatred of the corrupt Saudi Regime and the connections between them and the Bush Crime Family.

She is buying a hybrid car and experiencing a great deal of satisfaction at the thought of giving less of her hard earned cash to those repressive thugs.

The conversation shifted to other possible sources of Saudi Royal wealth and she brought up the fact that plastics are petroleum related products.

I'm not really that sure what goes into making plastics. Does it really involve oil?

Could the Saudis be making a killing on all of this cheap plastic crap that is in all of our homes these days? Anyone know?



Links On Plastics Anyone:
http://www.plastics.org/s_plastics/index.asp
http://www.plasticsresource.com/s_plasticsresource/index.asp

[Devlzown]

1. Yes, it's made of oil.

It didn't start out that way, but that's what they make it from now. http://pubs.acs.org/cen/whatstuff/stuff/8238plasticbags.html

[DistressedAmerican]

3. Natural gas as well! Who knew?

[TreasonousBastard]

2. The Saudis are, unfortunately...

too corrupt or stupid to get into the plastics biz.

Yes. Plastics are made primarily from petroleum, as are many other things, and one expert went so far as to say that petroleum is actually too valuable a resource to waste by burning as a fuel.

But, the Saudis already tried to get into plastics, and screwed it up. Back in the '70s, they built a factory in the middle of the desert with no roads in or out, and no pipeline to get the crude there.

Note that before oil was found over there, most of the sheikdoms had things like pearl diving in the gulf as their main source of income. Even now, they primarily use European technology and expertise to get anything done, not having much of their own. And they use foreign labor for anything that seems like work.

Iraq, Iran, and Israel are the only ones over there with decent technological capabilities and a working industial infrastrucure. Israel is out of the running for obvious reasons, and we destroyed Iraq's production capabilities. That leaves Iran as pretty much the only country that could benefit from doing anything with oil besides pumpng it.

[DistressedAmerican]

4. Interesting! But, if the pumpers are selling to the plastics producers are

they not still profiting nicely on the plastics being produced worldwide?

They don't have to directly produce the plastic itself to be making big bucks...

[LatePeriduct]

9. This is all very interesting.

Might you have documentation to back up these theories you are discussing?

Is there alot of hidden connections going on here behind the scenes with defense contractors somewhere, or is there some kind of overall history behind the Saudi business here or anything to reference.

Thanks for taking time out. :popcorn:

[wtbymark]

5. DuPont and Dow have a lock on the plastics industry

interesting note: Hemp can make a great non-petrolium based plastic (biodegradable plastic!) 2 men were responsible for the illegalization of marijuana; Henry Anslinger and Maurice DuPont. hmmmmmm

[DistressedAmerican]

6. Screw The Corporations and The Saudis. End Prohibition!

[Dogmudgeon]

7. All plastics are bio-degradable

Some just take a damn long time doing it.

Plastic garbage bags, for instance, can biodegrade in landfills in a matter of weeks under good conditions. PVC takes a whole lot longer. And some bacteria that thrive in composting processes have an affinity for plastic.

I agree with you, though -- hemp-based plastics have many advantages over petroleum-based plastics. Hemp probably has a place in the resource marketplace of the future. And by the time oil becomes too expensive to use as a fuel, people are going to need plenty of something to calm their nerves :)

--p!

[DistressedAmerican]

8. As an archaeologist I view the degredation of plastics as less important

than most. While the abundance of the material is obscene, future generations will know a lot about us based on plastics left behind in the archeaological record. I look at them a lot like ceramics. I find and study the things all the time and they are the basis of much of our understanding of the past.

I do recognize that their use is thouroughly excessive these days. And I most certainly do not was to continue enriching the oil producers. Maybe we need to go back to more ceramic and start enriching the potters (I can make about any vessel form you need) and clay diggers!

[Dogmudgeon]

10. I've heard that ceramics are excellent

for all kinds of uses.

But ceramics manufacture isn't as cost-effective as plastic manufacture. To make it competitive, it would have to be organized around local "cottage industries" to eliminate the costs of transportation that make plastic so much more attractive.

There are also some problems with glazes, but I suppose that would be a trivial problem to solve.

However, whether ceramics become more common or not, a lot of the problem with plastics in the ecosystem is that so much plastic is made to be thrown away immediately. Thermal depolymerization (TDP) would be an excellent way of disposing of a lot of this plastic, and provide a transitional source of hydrocarbon fuel -- a good clean-up technology while we are reducing the detritus of the industrial age and switching over to more sensible energy and packaging technologies.

As to the archeology of plastic, its biodegradability may present future archeologists with a lot of puzzles. Of course, this assumes that our current civilization not just collapses, but takes every trace of modern knowlege with it. I think we're beyond the point where that could happen without an extensive series of disasters and a near-complete die-off of the human species.

On an unrelated subject, I knew a UPenn-trained Egyptologist some years ago -- she was never able to find work in archeology. Have you been able to?

--p!

[DistressedAmerican]

11. I'm Still Finishing up My Doctorate. Academic Jobs Are Tight.

I think I am moving down to Mexico. I am a mayanist so, that is where my study area is. I have hade some informal type offers from the cultural resources folks down there. We'll see. It is very dependent on your area of specialization. Maya is hot now. Egypt was hot from the 30's to the 60's. Less so now but, coming back some.

[tinanator]

13. dont forget timber holding paper printing WR Hearst

he helped a good bit.

[KlatooBNikto]

12. Remember the name Saudi Basic Industries (SABIC) for short. They are

one of the largest producers in the world of waht are called precursor chemicals for many of the commonly used plastics.All of these chemicals aer derived from petroleum or natural gas.

[DistressedAmerican]

14. EXXON MOBIL CORP. et al. v. SAUDI BASIC INDUSTRIES CORP.

Thanks For The Name. A Google Search Turned Up An Interesting Lawsuit...

http://supct.law.cornell.edu/supct/html/03-1696.ZS.html

-Snip-
In this case, two subsidiaries of petitioner Exxon Mobil Corporation formed joint ventures with respondent Saudi Basic Industries Corp. (SABIC) to produce polyethylene in Saudi Arabia. When a dispute arose over royalties that SABIC had charged the joint ventures, SABIC preemptively sued the two subsidiaries in a Delaware state court, seeking a declaratory judgment that the royalties were proper. ExxonMobil and the subsidiaries then countersued in the Federal District Court, alleging that SABIC overcharged them. Before the state-court trial, which ultimately yielded a jury verdict of over $400 million for the ExxonMobil subsidiaries, the District Court denied SABIC’s motion to dismiss the federal suit. On interlocutory appeal, over eight months after the state-court jury verdict, the Third Circuit, on its own motion, raised the question whether subject-matter jurisdiction over the federal suit failed under the Rooker-Feldman doctrine because ExxonMobil’s claims had already been litigated in state court. The court did not question the District Court’s subject-matter jurisdiction at the suit’s outset, but held that federal jurisdiction terminated when the Delaware court entered judgment on the jury verdict.
-END SNIP-