News Right Now: Destabilizing Forces

Welcome to News Right Now ’Destabilizing Forces...”

As the fallout of Covid 19 continues, the effect on industry and commerce is snowballing out of control, with the prospect of hundreds of companies going bankrupt. The markets buckled this week as oil prices fell to a record low, falling below zero and today the number stands at minus 40 dollars a barrel! Forcing trade at negative prices... meaning that rather than be paid for the commodity, oil companies need to pay traders to take it away!! What triggered the inversion of prices on April 20 was the overflow of unsellable oil in the tank farms of Oklahoma, where U.S. oil futures are settled. But the collapse in oil prices sent shockwaves rippling around the world.

The collapse in the demand for crude oil products like petrol and jet fuel has had a knock on effect on the build up of supply , and storage depots in the US and UK are or close to, full capacity... leaving exported shipments stranded on tankers at sea ports unable to make delivery. The sharp fall in prices could force a wave of bankruptcies; oil giants Halliburton, Marathon Oil and Occidental have already lost more than 66% of their value, with optimistic commentators projecting at least 100 companies could go bankrupt.

The industry in the United States threatened with job losses and bankruptcies, the Trump administration has been pushing the Saudis and Russians to cut oil production in recent months. Earlier this month, Russia, Mexico and the Organisation for Petroleum and Energy Companies (OPEC) came to an agreement to slash production by 10 million barrels a day, almost a quarter, in an effort to boost prices. US President Donald Trump supported the deal, having spoken to Russian President Vladimir Putin and Saudi King Salman over the phone. In an interview Thursday on CNBC, the energy secretary, Dan Brouillette, said that OPEC and its allies “can easily get to cut 10 million barrells, perhaps even higher, and certainly higher if you include the other nations that produce oil, nations like Canada, Brazil, others.”

However although the OPEC members agreed to the deal, non OPEC members America, Canada and Norway, did not commit to any new measures. Saudi Arabia, one of the leading oil exporting countries and a key member of OPEC, has been savaged by both the drop in oil prices and the collapse of the tourism industry, both industries that underpin Saudi economic life. The US is utterly dependent on Saudi money, oil and strategic cooperation. When Trump came to power, Saudi had immediately pledged hundreds of billions of dollars in trade deals aimed at reviving the American jobs and the American economy. Likewise it wasted billions in a proxy war in Yemen, and investment in US military adventurism.

Now, contrary to Saudi’s own interests it moved immediately to force oil prices down, with one eye on a global drop in demand, and another eye on minimising the harm to the global economy (a euphemism for the American economy) submissively succumbing to America's interests, and focusing on short term gains as opposed to the long term market stability of its own nation. The Khilafah would end the US exploitation of oil prices, by halting oil supplies to all belligerent nations including America... strengthening its own infrastructure and rapidly industrializing all economic sectors to ensure citizens of the state are well looked after and not dependent on western nations for imported products, especially food, medicines and agricultural infrastructure.

It will use its abundant resources for the care and advancement of the Muslim ummah and weaponise its oil and strategic locations against America, rather than bend in submission to its demands, and facilitate the global economy and all the unjust policies that emanate from it. If the oil of the Muslim Ummah was supervised by the Khilafah, so much could be accomplished for security of the Muslims, and the authority of Islam. None of this is beyond the Ummah or in the realm of fiction. It is both possible and practical. However, the Ummah must take the matter of establishing Khilafah Rashidah in its own hands and the rest will fall into place InshAllah.

( يَا أَيُّهَا الَّذِينَ آمَنُوا اسْتَجِيبُوا لِلَّهِ وَلِلرَّسُولِ إِذَا دَعَاكُمْ لِمَا يُحْيِيكُمْ وَاعْلَمُوا أَنَّ اللَّهَ يَحُولُ بَيْنَ الْمَرْءِ وَقَلْبِهِ وَأَنَّهُ إِلَيْهِ تُحْشَرُون)

“O you who have believed, respond to Allah and to the Messenger when he calls you to that which gives you life. And know that Allah intervenes between a man and his heart and that to Him you will be gathered.” Surah al Anfal verse 24

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